1500-1700

(My original has many pictures and illustrations.  Please excuse this installment until I am able to complete it.)

1500         1500         1500         1500

Century 1500 Preview: The Reformation and Counter-Reformation.  Jews, tired of Catholic domination help fund Protestants and as crypto-Jews join their churches.  The earlier Renaissance continues and Scholars research ancient texts.  Protestants have a genuine interest in reading the Old Testament and begin to identify with the Jews.  Philo-Judaism begins.  Luther first begins to evangelize Jews, but soon realizes their anti-Christian attitudes.  He then turns to expose them.  Former Jews continually inform Christians about their earlier beliefs.  The Protestant Geneva Bible is produced with strong Protestant, non-Zionist commentary.

Societal Views about Jews:  Jews tribally isolate themselves, but continue to work together to monopolize at every opportunity.  Financial institutions are still primarily Jewish.  The upper classes borrow from the Jews and the common working man is exploited by the Jews.

By 1500 all of Western Europe except northern Italy, parts of Germany, and the Papal possessions around Avignon, had been rid of the Jewish invasion.  For a while, at least, Europe was free of the Jews; not until 1650 did they return in any numbers. Says Encyclopedia Britannica: [page 57-58, vol. 13 - 1947.] "The great mass of the Jewish people were thus to be found once more in the East, in the Polish and Turkish empires . . The few communities suffered to remain in western Europe were meanwhile subjected at last to all the restrictions which earlier ages had usually allowed to remain as an ideal; so that in a sense, the Jewish dark ages may be said to begin with the Renaissance."

1500 POLAND -An estimated 20-30,000 Jews were living in Poland. Within 75 years the number of Jews would reach 150,000.

1501 - Pope Alexander VI grants to the crown of Spain all the newly-discovered countries in the Americas, on condition that provision be made for the religious instruction of the native populations.

Antonio Bonfini (1434–1503) was an Italian humanist and poet who spent the last years of his career as a court historian in Hungary with King Matthias Corvinus.  Bonfini was commissioned by the King to produce a work chronicling the History of Hungary.  He attested the truth of the ritual murder accusation: The traditions of their ancestors tell them that the blood of a Christian is an excellent balm for healing the wound produced by circumcision... They are obliged, by virtue of an ancient and secret commandment, to offer yearly sacrifice with Christian blood and their own semen."  If it seems that Bonfini's words show excessive medieval superstition and credulity, it must be remembered that the Jews' Babylonian Talmud - the indisputable religious and civil "law" even today - prescribes a pharmacopia not only of blood and semen, but also of such choice medicaments as rotten black pullets and feces of white dog.

Erasmus, von Erbach-Erbach (c.1466 - 1503). “Addressing the problem of exploitation of the peasants by Jewish moneylenders, he wrote: “What robbery and oppression of the poor there is by the Jews, so that they cannot suffer any longer!  God have mercy on them.  The Jewish usurers are fast-rooted even in the smallest villages, and if they lend five gulden they exact security of six times as much.  They wring out interest on the interest, and yet again interest, until the poor wretch loses all he owns.”

Conrad Celtes (2/1, 1459 – 2/4, 1508), was a German Renaissance humanist scholar and Neo-Latin poet.  “Relegated to perpetual exile, and scattered throughout the entire universe, the Jews outrage and disturb the society of the human race.” (J. Janssen)

Johann Geiler of Kaysersberg (3/16 1445 -3/10, 1510) is considered the most important German preacher of the late Middle Ages.  “Are the Jews better than the Christians, that they would be unwilling to work with their hands?  Are they not under the word of God: 'In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread'?  To practice usury is not work, but to flay others, while wallowing in idleness.” (J. Janssen)

 Hieronymus Bosch (~1450 – 8/9, 1516), was a Dutch painter.  His work is known for its use of fantastic imagery to illustrate moral and religious concepts and narratives.  His Art was fully Christian with the parallel anti-Jewish motifs.

 Bearing of The Cross, Hieronymus Bosch (1462-1516), Musée des Beaux Arts, Ghent.  Jesus and St Veronica with the Jews.

 Raphael (Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino) (April 6 or March 28, 1483 – April 6, 1520), was an Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance.  His work is admired for its clarity of form and ease of composition and for its visual achievement of the Neoplatonic ideal of human grandeur.  Together with Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci, he forms the traditional trinity of great masters of that period.

  Johannes (Josef) Pfefferkorn (1469 – 1523) was a Jewish-born, German Catholic theologian and writer who converted from Judaism.  Pfefferkorn actively preached against the Jews and attempted to destroy copies of the Talmud, and engaged in a long running pamphleteering campaign against and with Johann Reuchlin.  Wrote “Enemy of the Jews”

He published several pamphlets in which he tried to demonstrate that Jewish religious writings were hostile to Christianity.  In Der Judenspiegel (The Jewish Mirror) (Cologne, 1507), he demanded that the Jews should give up the practice of usury, work for their living, attend Christian sermons, and do away with the Books of the Talmud.   On the other hand, he condemned the persecution of the Jews as an obstacle to their conversion, and, in a pamphlet, Warnungsspiegel (Warning Mirror), defended them against charges of murdering Christian children for ritual purposes.  In Warnungsspiegel, he professed to be a friend of the Jews, and desired to introduce Christianity among them for their own good.  He urged them to convince the Christian world that the Jews do not need Christian blood for their religious rites and advocated seizing the Talmud by force from them.  "The causes which hinder the Jews from becoming Christians," he wrote, "are three: first, usury; second, because they are not compelled to attend Christian churches to hear the sermons; and third, because they honor the Talmud."  Bitterly opposed by the Jews on account of this work, he virulently attacked them in: Wie die blinden Jüden ihr Ostern halten (How to keep the blind Jews their Easter) (1508); Judenbeicht (Jews Confession) (1508); and Judenfeind (Jews Enemy)(1509).  In his third pamphlet he contradicted what he had written earlier and insisted that every Jew considers it a good deed to kill, or at least to mock, a Christian; therefore he deemed it the duty of all true Christians to expel the Jews from all Christian lands; if the law should forbid such a deed, they do not need to obey it: "It is the duty of the people to ask permission of the rulers to take from the Jews all their books except the Bible...."  He preached that Jewish children should be taken away from their parents and educated as Catholics. In conclusion he wrote: "Who afflicts the Jews is doing the will of God, and who seeks their benefit will incur damnation."  In the fourth pamphlet, Pfefferkorn declared that the only way to get rid of the Jews was either to expel or enslave them; the first thing to be done was to collect all the copies of the Talmud found among the Jews and to burn them. 

Most Russians disparaged the Old Testament, believing that the Law and Commandments had been “made disauthentique and abolished by the death and blood of Christ.”  Jews were barred from the country.

  Vasili III Ivanovich (3/25, 1479 – 12/3, 1533) was the Grand Prince of Moscow from 1505 to 1533.  He was the son of Ivan III Vasiliyevich.  Vasili said about the Jews that he “dreaded no people more”.

On August 19, 1509, Emperor Maximilian, who already had expelled the Jews from his own domains of Styria, Carinthia, and Carniola, ordered the Jews to deliver to Pfefferkorn all books opposing Christianity; or the destruction any Hebrew book except the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament).  Reuchlin declared that only those books obviously offensive (as the Nizachon and Toldoth Jeschu) would be destroyed.   The elector sent all the answers received at the end of October to the emperor through Pfefferkorn.   Reuchlin reported in favor of the Jews, and on May 23, 1510, the emperor suspended his edict of 10 November 1509, and the books were returned to the Jews on June 6.

  Johann Reuchlin (1/29, 1455 – 6/30, 1522) was a German humanist and a scholar of Greek and Hebrew.  For much of his life, he was the real center of all Greek and Hebrew teaching in Germany.   Many of his contemporaries thought that the first step to the conversion of the Jews was to take away their books. This view was advocated by Johannes Pfefferkorn.  Pfefferkorn's plans were backed by the Dominicans of Cologne; and in 1509 he obtained the emperor's authority to confiscate all Jewish books directed against the Christian faith.    In 1510 Reuchlin was appointed by Emperor Maximilian to a commission which was convened to review the matter.  Argument ensued. In 1513 Reuchlin was summoned before a court of the inquisition.   Some believe that this affair helped spark the Protestant Reformation.  Although suspected of a leaning toward Protestantism, Reuchlin never left the Roman Catholic Church.  In 1518 he was appointed professor of Hebrew and Greek at Wittenberg, but instead sent his nephew Melanchthon.

 Dr. Johann Georg Faust (c1480 – c1540) was an itinerant alchemist, astrologer, and magician of the German Renaissance.  His life became the nucleus of the popular tale of Doctor Faust from circa the 1580s, notably culminating in Christopher Marlowe's play “The Tragicall History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus” (1604) and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's closet drama Faust (1808).  Faust in search of greater powers, made an agreement with Mephistopheles according to which he would sell his soul to the Devil in return of 24 years of knowledge, magical power, and unlimited pleasure.  In the end Faust regretted the agreement, understanding the illusory nature of that which he had apparently gained, and he was taken off to Hell.

 Mephistopheles is a demon featured in German folklore.  He originally appeared in literature as the demon in the Faust legend, and he has since appeared in other works as a stock character version of the Devil.  The name is associated with the Faust legend of a scholar — based on the historical Johann Georg Faust — who wagers his soul against the Devil.  The name appears in the late 16th century Faust chapbooks.

****Jews Thrive:

“As early as 1512 Marranos began to settle in Antwerp, the most important port in northern Europe.  With the rise of Amsterdam ‘the Dutch Jerusalem,’ more Jews moved there; and Jewish entrepreneurs extended throughout the Dutch colonial world.  By the eighteenth century, the immigrant Marranos in Amsterdam, an international trading center and enemy of Spain, economically peaked, long since openly renewing their Jewish identities.  In Amsterdam there: ‘… developed the largest and most important (Jewish) community in Europe, with connections in many another Jewish settlement, and with the far flung influence in the Dutch colonies.’  Jews in Amsterdam were deeply involved in a variety of economic activities, including Dutch colonialism (one quarter of the Dutch East India company's stockholders were Jewish, for instance) and the diamond and jewelry trade as a virtual Jewish monopoly.  A common theme of non-Jewish peoples throughout Jewish history surfaced when, ‘there was constant complaining, both at home and in the colonies, that these strangers were undermining the rights of native-born Dutchmen.’- “The Economic Activities of the Jews of Amsterdam in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries” (1937) by Herbert Bloom

1516 Unlike much of Europe, the presence of Jews was usually tolerated in Venice from the late fourteenth century. Restrictions on their movement and permitted trades varied, but money lending, running pawnshops, dealing in second hand goods and tailoring were common occupations.  The tolerance of Jews in the Venetian Republic came to an end following the 1509 influx of Sephardic Jews expelled from the Iberian Peninsula in 1492, and some public figures talked of deporting or isolating the Venetian Jews.  The Jews of Venice were not expelled, as was the case in many European countries, but the Venetian Ghetto was instituted in 1516.  Surrounded by canals, the area was only linked to the rest of the city by two bridges, which were closed from midnight until dawn and during certain Christian festivals, when all Jews were required to stay in the Ghetto.  The Ghetto or closed community was already used by Jewish communities worldwide.  This was for purity from the gentiles and for leadership control.  Venice, instead of commonly discussed as compulsion to a ghetto, was a toleration of Jews.

Despite the restrictions on movement and terribly cramped conditions, the Jewish population thrived, and in 1541, the quarter was enlarged to cover the neighboring Ghetto Vecchio, and in 1633, the Ghetto Nuovissimo (Newest Ghetto) was also added.

“It is clear that an objection to the usurious Jews is gradually developing amongst the high and the low. I approve of lawful methods of preventing the exploitation of the people by Jewish usury. Shall a foreign invading people rule over us? And rule over us not on account of their greater strength and courage or higher virtue, but through their wretched money? Shall these people dare to fatten themselves without punishment on the sweat of the peasant and the craftsman?” - Abbot Tritheim of Wurzburg - (1462 - 1516)

   Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci (April 15, 1452 – May 2, 1519) was an Italian Renaissance polymath: painter, sculptor, architect, musician, scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, cartographer, botanist and writer whose genius, perhaps more than that of any other figure, epitomized the Renaissance humanist ideal.  Leonardo has often been described as the archetype of the Renaissance Man, a man of "unquenchable curiosity" and "feverishly inventive imagination".  He is widely considered to be one of the greatest painters of all time and perhaps the most diversely talented person ever to have lived.  Born out of wedlock to a notary, Piero da Vinci, and a peasant woman, Caterina (possibly Jew), his father married another woman two months later.   Among his works, the Mona Lisa is the most famous and The Last Supper the most reproduced religious painting.  Leonardo's drawing of the Vitruvian Man is also regarded as a cultural icon. Leonardo is revered for his technological ingenuity.  He conceptualised a helicopter, a tank, concentrated solar power, a calculator, the double hull, and he outlined a rudimentary theory of plate tectonics.  He made important discoveries in anatomy, civil engineering, optics, and hydrodynamics, but he did not publish his findings and they had no direct influence on later science.  Much of the Last Supper is gentilized (with Jewish faux pas) and Judas has Jew features.

1512-1517  Fifth Lateran Council, 18th Catholic Council -Pope Julius II called and his successor Pope Leo X carried on the Council. No doctrine was proclaimed with all decrees primarily disciplinary in trying to stem the tide of Martin Luther and others who were outwardly rebelling against the Church. Though the idea of a Crusade against the Turks was brought up, the problems with the growing Protestant Reformation occupied the agenda. The Council reaffirmed the superiority of the Pope over conciliar powers.

  Hans Sachs (11/5, 1494 – 1/19, 1576) was a German meistersinger ("mastersinger"), poet, playwright and shoemaker.  The great event of his intellectual life was the coming of the Reformation; he became an ardent adherent of Luther.  He wrote over 6000 pieces of various kinds.  His productivity is especially remarkable because he kept working as a shoemaker throughout his life, because Mastersingers did not as a common practice write or sing for profit.  Mastersongs, Carnival plays, Tragedies, Comedies, Prose dialogues, Fables, Religious tracts.  He succeeds best in the short anecdotal Fastnachtsspiel or Shrovetide play, where characterization and humorous situation are of more importance than dramatic form.  Many of his more than 6,200 dramas deal with Jews, and these he painted in various hues of charlatanry and evil.

1516 “Orlando Furioso” (The Frenzy of Orlando) is an Italian epic poem which has exerted a wide influence on later culture.  It is a sequel to "Orlando in Love".  The action takes place against the background of the war between Charlemagne's Christian paladins and the Saracen army that is attempting to invade Europe.  Ariosto has little concern for historical or geographical accuracy, and the poem wanders at will from Japan to the Hebrides, as well as including many fantastical and magical elements (such as a trip to the moon, and an array of fantastical creatures including a gigantic sea monster called the orc, and the hippogriff).  Many themes are interwoven in its complicated episodic structure, but the most important plot is the paladin Orlando's unrequited love for the pagan princess Angelica, which develops into the madness of the title.  After this comes the love between the female Christian warrior Bradamante and the Saracen Ruggiero.  1495 Orlando Innamorato (Orlando in Love) is a chivalric poem narrates a series of fantastic adventures, duels, love and magic. 

 1517 Martin Luther (11/10, 1483 – 2/18, 1546) initiated the Protestant Reformation. As a priest and theology professor, he confronted indulgence salesman Johann Tetzel with his The Ninety-Five Theses in 1517.  He reaches out to the Jews, then after about 20 years rejects them.  Before the fundamentalist Inerrancy movement of the 19^th century, Luther questioned whether Esther should be in the Bible as it does not even mention God, but only revenge against Gentiles.

****The Protestant Reformation was the European Christian reform movement that established Protestantism as a constituent branch of contemporary Christianity. It began in 1517 when Martin Luther published The Ninety-Five Theses, and concluded in 1648 with the Treaty of Westphalia that ended one hundred and thirty-one years of consecutive European religious wars.  Europeans really didn’t view the the Roman Empire as dead until the Reformation.

 The Five Solas are five Latin phrases that emerged during the Protestant Reformation and summarize the Reformers' basic theological beliefs.  The five solas articulated the  pillars which the Reformers believed to be essentials of the Christian life and practice.  Sola scriptura ("by Scripture alone"); Sola fide ("by faith alone"); Sola gratia ("by grace alone"); Solus Christus or Solo Christo ("Christ alone" or "through Christ alone"); Soli Deo gloria ("glory to God alone").

1500 - 1532 Solomon Molcho (Diego Peres) -Marrano and pseudo messiah.  He became so impressed with Reuveni (1524) that he reconverted to Judaism.  He predicted correctly an earthquake in Portugal and a flood in Rome.  At first Pope Clement VII befriended him, after his predictions came true.  He traveled with David Reuveni to Charles V to convince him to let the Jews fight against the Turks (see 1532).  Charles V had him killed.

1510 Abraham ben Eliezer Halevi (Spain-Jerusalem) -An apocalyptic Kabbalist (c. 1460-1532) wrote letters proclaiming the year 1524 as the beginning of the arrival of the Messiah.  Halevi, originally from Spain, spent many years wandering after the expulsion until he settled in Jerusalem in 1514.  There Halevi, who was widely respected for his scholarly knowledge, urged people to repent and make themselves ready for the redemption.  Among his many treatises on Kabbalah are Mashreh Kitrin (Untyer of Knots) Maamar Perek Chelek on talmudic sources for redemption and a commentary on Nevuat Hayeled (A Child's Prophesy).  Halevi's letters unfortunately paved the way for the acceptance of messianic pretenders such as Molcho and Shabbetai Zevi.

Johannes Trithemius (2/1, 1462 – 12/13, 1516), born Johann Heidenberg, was a German abbot, lexicographer, historian, cryptographer, polymath and occultist who had an influence on later occultism.  In 1516, "It is understandable that with both Low and High classes distaste for usurious Jews has taken root, and I approve all legal measures for the security of the people against the exploitation by the Jewish usury.  Or should a strange, invaded people to rule over us? - Not rule by larger Power, higher courage and superior virtue, but only by misery, from all sides and zusammengescharrtes money by all means, the acquisition and possession of this people, the greatest asset seems to be?  This people which fattens with impunity by the sweat of the peasants and artisans?"

  Charles V (Spanish: Carlos I, German: Karl V., Italian: Carlo V, Dutch: Karel V, French: Charles Quint; 2/24, 1500 – 9/21, 1558) was ruler of the Holy Roman Empire from 1519 and, as Charles I, of the Spanish Empire from 1516 until his voluntary retirement and abdication in favor of his younger brother Ferdinand I and his son Philip II in 1556.  As the heir of three of Europe's leading dynasties—the House of Habsburg of the Habsburg Monarchy; the House of Valois-Burgundy of the Burgundian Netherlands; and the House of Trastámara of Crown of Castile-León & Aragon—he ruled over extensive domains in Central, Western, and Southern Europe; and the Spanish colonies in North, Central, and South America, the Caribbean, and Asia.  As Holy Roman Emperor, Charles called Martin Luther to the Diet of Worms in 1521, promising him safe conduct if he would appear.  Initially dismissing Luther's theses as "an argument between monks", he later outlawed Luther and his followers in that same year but was tied up with other concerns and unable to take action against Protestantism.  Charles V was generally protective of the Jews.  In 1520 he refrained from demanding the customary coronation tax.  In 1530 Charles V reconfirmed the privileges he had granted to the Jews and defended them through the encouragement of Josel of Rosheim against Martin Luther.

 A Madrigal is a secular vocal music composition, usually a partsong, of the Renaissance and early Baroque eras. Traditionally, polyphonic madrigals are unaccompanied; the number of voices varies from two to eight, and most frequently from three to six.  Madrigals originated in Italy during the 1520s.  Unlike many strophic forms of the time, most madrigals were through-composed.  In the madrigal, the composer attempted to express the emotion contained in each line, and sometimes individual words, of a celebrated poem.

Sebastian Brant (also Brandt) (1457 – 5/10, 1521) was an Alsatian humanist and satirist.  He is best known for his satire Das Narrenschiff (The Ship of Fools).  Under the form of an allegory, a ship laden with fools and steered by fools goes to the fools' paradise of Narragonia.  Brant here lashes with unsparing vigor the weaknesses and vices of his time.  He conceives Saint Grobian, whom he imagines to be the patron saint of vulgar and coarse people.  His (Ship of Fools) is regarded as one of the cornerstones of German literature.  It roundly condemns Jews and "Christian Jews," as in the following: “Forsooth the wound of the Jews was great, / But they can no longer remain among us / For the Christian-Jews have driven them out / And they abandon themselves to Jewry. / I know many such I shall not name; / They practice unfair and barbarous trades, / And both law and right are silent. (J. Janssen, Die allegemeine Züstande des deutscben Volkes ... )(The terms of State of the German People)

Pope Adrian VI (3/2, 1459 – 9/14, 1523), served from 1/9, 1522.  German Pope Adrian VI was the last non-Italian Pope until Pope John Paul II, 455 years later.

1522 Gil Gonzalez de Avila (Central America) -A "New Christian", became governor after defeating a local tribe headed by an Indian Chief named Nicarao.

1524 David Reuveni (Italy-Portugal) -Arrived in Rome claiming to be a representative of the Ten Lost Tribes and requesting assistance from Clement VII to fight the Turks. Though he was burned at an Auto da Fe in Portugal in 1552, his effect on his fellow Jews was to raise their self-esteem, knowing that somewhere there existed a strong and independent part of Israel.

Thomas Müntzer (ca. 1489– 5/27 1525) was an early Reformation-era German theologian, who became a rebel leader during the Peasants' War and supported the Anabaptists.  In the 19th century, he was held up by socialists such as Friedrich Engels as an example of class struggle.

John of Leiden (1509? – 1/22, 1536) was an Anabaptist leader and a tailor's apprentice.  The conventional view is that John of Leiden set up in Münster a polygamous theocracy, yet this picture is based almost entirely on accounts written by his enemies.  The Anabaptists emphasized social equality, political democracy, and communal living during the time of John's nominal rule.

****The Ten Lost Tribes of Israel refers to the Tribes of ancient Israel that formed the Kingdom of Israel and disappeared from the Biblical account after the kingdom was destroyed in about 720 BCE by ancient Assyria.  Many groups have traditions concerning the continued hidden existence or future public return of these tribes.  This is a subject based upon written religious tradition and partially upon speculation.  There is a vast amount of literature on the Lost Tribes and no specific source can be relied upon for a complete answer. 

Groups claiming descent from specific Lost Tribes : Bene Ephraim of southern India;    Nasranis of Kerala (ancient Malabar);     Bene Israel of South Asia;    Bnei Menashe of India;    Beta Israel of Ethiopia;    Bukharian Jews of Central Asia;    Persian Jews;    Igbo Jews of Africa;    Samaritans.    Groups claiming descent from a non-specific Lost Tribe: Lemba people of Africa;   Pashtuns of the Afghan region.    Origin theories: Chiang Min people of China, Kaifeng Jews, Bedul, Petra.    Speculation regarding other ethnic groups: Scythian / Cimmerian Theories;    British Israelism variant;    Brit-Am variant.   Other variants: Kurds;    Japanese;    Irish;    Native Americans.    Other traditions: Latter-day Saints.

British Israelism (also known as 'Anglo-Israelism') is the theory that people of Western European descent, especially Britain and the United States, are descended from the 'Lost Tribes' of Israel.  Adherents believe that the deported Israelites became Scythians / Cimmerians who are then alleged to have become the Celts / Anglo-Saxons of Western Europe.  The theory arose in England, from where it spread to the United States. 

Brit-Am, sometimes confused with British Israelism, is an organization centered in Jerusalem, and composed of Jews and non-Jews.  Brit-Am, like British Israel, identifies the Lost Ten Tribes with peoples of West European descent, but does so from a Jewish perspective quoting both Biblical and Rabbinical sources.  The evidence that Brit-Am relies upon is Biblical in the light of Rabbinical Commentary but is supplemented by secular theories which posit the Lost Tribes / Scythian / Cimmerian connection which they then believe to have become various Western European nations.  An example of Brit-Am scholarship may be seen from its treatment of Obadiah 1:20 where the original Hebrew as understood by Rabbinical Commentators such as Rashi and Abarbanel is referring to the Lost Ten Tribes in France and England.  Brit-Am also believes that "Other Israelite Tribes gave rise to elements within Finland, Switzerland, Sweden, Norway, Ireland, Wales, France, Holland, and Belgium" and that "The Tribe of Dan is to be found amongst part of the Danish, Irish, and Welsh."  Brit-Am also believes that the Khazars were descended from the Ten Tribes and quotes Jewish and non-Jewish sources that were contemporaneous with them.

 Ulrich von Hutten (4/21, 1488 – 8/29, 1523) was a German scholar, poet and reformer.  He was an outspoken critic of the Roman Catholic Church and a bridge between the humanists and the Lutheran Reformation.  He was a leader of the Imperial Knights of the Holy Roman Empire.

 Hans Holbein (c. 1460–1524) was a German painter.  Hans the Elder was a pioneer and leader in the transformation of German art from the Gothic to the Renaissance style.  He was also a woodcut artist and an illustrator of books, and was a church window designer.

 Hans Holbein the Younger (c. 1497– ~11/29, 1543) was a German artist and printmaker who worked in a Northern Renaissance style.  He produced religious art, satire, and Reformation propaganda, and made a significant contribution to the history of book design.   The Ambassadors (1533) by Hans Holbein the Younger contains several meticulously rendered objects, the meaning of which is the cause of much debate.  It is also a much-cited example of anamorphosis in painting.  North's book analyzes the painting and shows it to be representing Good Friday through various clues on the instruments.

Shepard dial, Universal equinoctial dial (disassembled), Quadrant, Polyhedral sundial, Torquetum, Peter Apian's arithmetic book

 The Abbot, woodcut from the Dance of Death series, refashions the late-medieval allegory of the danse macabre as a reformist satire.  Holbein's series of woodcuts shows the figure of "Death" in many disguises, confronting individuals from all walks of life.  None escape Death's skeleton clutches, even the pious.  In addition to the Dance of Death Holbein completed Icones or Series of the Old Gosspel (It contains two works: The images of the stories of the Old Gospel and Portraits or printing boards of the story of the Old Gospel). These works were arranged by Holbein with Melchior & Gaspar Trechsel near 1526, later printed and edited in Latin by Jean & Francois Frellon with 92 woodcuts. These two works also share the first four figures with the Dance of Death.

 

Death doesn't discriminate between young and old, rich or poor. By Hans Holbein the Younger, 1526.

1526 March 30, ANTWERP (Belgium) -Emperor Charles V, ruler of Spain and the Holy Roman Empire, issued a general safe-conduct to the Portuguese "New Christians" and Marranos (though not to professing Jews), allowing them to live and work in Antwerp.  Although they still had to live under cover, they were safe from the Inquisition which was not recognized and allowed to work in the Southern "Low Countries," though they were under Spanish rule.  Only after the Treaty of Utrecht (1713), when Antwerp passed to Austrian rule, were the Jews able to live there openly. Charles was the grandson of Ferdinand as well as Emperor Maximilian I.

1527 June 16, FLORENCE (Italy) -With the expulsion of the Medici family (as in 1495) the Jews were again ordered to leave.  Their actual expulsion was delayed until 1531, when Alessandro de Medici became duke and the order was rescinded.

 Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli (5/3, 1469 – 6/21, 1527) was an Italian philosopher, humanist, and writer based in Florence during the Renaissance. He is one of the main founders of modern political science.  He was a diplomat, political philosopher, playwright, and a civil servant of the Florentine Republic.  Was he a Jew?  The Medicis were driven into exile and the Jews of Florence were living under an expulsion order, which was, however, suspended thanks to a massive loan from the Jewish community.  Machiavelli had tirades against the corruption of the Church of Rome.  He denounced the turn-the-other-cheek themes of Christianity [The origin of this phrase is really to force the striker to slap as an equal, not back-handed as a slave], and called instead for a return to older, pre-Christian values of manly virtue, courage and a willingness to do the hard things that are required of great leaders. [These are all quite Christian values.]

Machiavelli is commonly taken to be saying that the ends always justify the means, but he does not believe that.  Quite the contrary, Machiavelli is not telling one to be evil, he is simply stating the facts: If you lead, there will be occasions when you will have to do unpleasant, even evil things, or be destroyed.  If you are lucky, these occasions will be few and far between (a leader who never had to do such things would be fortunate indeed).  He wrote little of Christian themes, but wrote that the Jews, even under Moses' leadership, could not overcome the slave mentality of those who grew up under Egyptian tyranny.  To create a free nation, the entire generation had to be obliterated in the wilderness.  A new generation, raised in freedom, fulfilled the mission.  He wrote under the milieu after the Jews were expelled from Spain in 1492.  Europe was awash in migrating Jews, some headed over land towards Central Europe, where the shtetl would be founded, others by sea across the northern Mediterranean to such centers of Jewish culture as Livorno and Venice.  Machiavelli was surely in contact with these wandering Jews.

   Albrecht Dürer (5/21 1471 – 4/6 1528) was a German painter, printmaker, engraver, mathematician, and theorist from Nuremberg. His prints established his reputation across Europe and he has been regarded as the greatest artist of the Northern Renaissance.  His vast body of work includes altarpieces and religious works, numerous portraits and self-portraits, and copper engravings.  His woodcuts, such as the Apocalypse series (1498), retain a more Gothic flavor than the rest of his work.  His well-known works include the Knight, Death, and the Devil (1513), Saint Jerome in his Study (1514) and Melencolia I (1514), which has been the subject of extensive analysis and interpretation.  His watercolors mark him as one of the first European landscape artists, while his ambitious woodcuts revolutionized the potential of that medium.  In the period 1473 to 1499, the Nuremburg pursued the goal of banishing its Jews.  Nuremberg would not have another Jew for 3 centuries.  Despite the absence of Jews, he continues to use the strategy of Jews as killers of Christ and Christians.  He distorts facial expressions and features of clothing.  “It is not enough that they(Jews) cut Christ to ribbons with their bramble-whips … he is spit upon, bashed, drubbed with cudgels, ripped from his lofty throne and dragged by his hair.”  “Circumcised race, hating God, ungrateful, haughty! Shaking your godless necks free of the yoke of him  Who once led you across the sea and fed you from the heavens.  Are you ashamed to have him as king and God?  Do you dare to condemn him to death, Race full of deceit, bile and envy?”  About Christ: “He was sold to the perfidious Jews Who piled many great lies on him.”

 1529 Siege of Vienna: Muslims reached the gates of Vienna.  The Ottoman failure to capture Vienna in 1529 turned the tide against almost a century of unchecked conquest throughout eastern and central Europe, which had previously directly annexed Central Hungary and established a vassal state in Transylvania.

 1530 John Calvin (Middle French: Jean Cauvin; 7/10, 1509 – 5/27, 1564) was an influential French theologian and pastor during the Protestant Reformation.  He was a principal figure in the development of the system of Christian theology later called Calvinism.  Originally trained as a humanist lawyer, he broke from the Roman Catholic Church around 1530.  After religious tensions provoked a violent uprising against Protestants in France, Calvin fled to Basel, Switzerland, where in 1536 he published the first edition of his seminal work Institutes of the Christian Religion.  [Some say many of the Protestant movements were funded by Jews.  Was Calvin, Cohen?  Of course, Jews can become great Christians.]  The school of thought, known as Calvinism was not created by Calvin and even its Five Points known as TULIP were not as strict as their commonly known summaries.   “A Response To Questions and Objections of a Certain Jew”- “Their [the Jews] rotten and unbending stiffneckedness deserves that they be oppressed unendingly and without measure or end and that they die in their misery without the pity of anyone.”  Calvinism spread to the Netherlands, where its humanism helped establish a refuge for Spanish and Portuguese Jews.  Although he often accused his opponents of Judaizing - and one Servetus was actually burned at the stake due to a dispute with him - Calvin placed unusual emphasis on the Old Testament and the Ten Commandments.  John Calvin In one example, he states, "I have had much conversation with many Jews: I have never seen either a drop of piety or a grain of truth or ingenuousness—nay, I have never found common sense in any Jew."  Calvin who had rejected the use of force to convert Jews in his early writing later called them ‘profane dogs’.  He felt that “the Jews stupidly devour all the riches of the earth with their unrestrained cupidity.” “The degenerate and unlimited stubbornness (of the Jews) has served to justify their unending accumulation of misery without limit and without measure.  Everyone seems cheered by their punishment; no one feels sorry for them.”

Portions of the Reformation received Jewish money as an opponent of the established Catholic Church.

****Infiltration into Protestantism by Jews – Throughout the centuries, Jews have become Christians both honestly and dishonestly.  The honest may continue to be pro-Judaism in different degrees and bring those biases into the Christian church.  The dishonest become Christians to better their lot in life (business connections) and continue to bring their antichristian attitudes into the Christian church.  Different sects have risen which have been more conducive to this dishonest Jewish infiltration.

Michael Servetus ((possibly Jewish birth) 9/29, 1511 – 10/27, 1553) was a Spanish theologian, physician, cartographer, and humanist. He was the first European to describe the function of pulmonary circulation.  His interests included many sciences: mathematics, astronomy and meteorology, geography, human anatomy, medicine and pharmacology, as well as jurisprudence, and the scholarly study of the Bible in its original languages. He is renowned in the history of several of these fields, particularly medicine and theology.  He participated in the Protestant Reformation, and later developed a nontrinitarian Christology.  Condemned by Catholics and Protestants alike, he was arrested in Geneva and burnt at the stake as a heretic by order of the Protestant Geneva governing council.

1534 -The Luther Bible is a German Bible translation by Martin Luther. This translation is considered to be largely responsible for the evolution of the modern German language and further unification of German territories.

****The Alumbrados (Illuminated) was a term used to loosely describe practitioners of a mystical form of Christianity in Spain during the 15th-16th centuries. In spite of their lack of organization and their peaceful forms of expression through the Catholic Church in the late 15th century, they were severely repressed and became some of the early victims of the Spanish Inquisition.  Most of those persecuted as Alumbrados were Conversos (Jewish converts to Christianity) or Moriscos (Moorish converts).  Ignatius of Loyola, while studying at Salamanca in 1527, was brought before an ecclesiastical commission on a charge of sympathy with the alumbrados, but escaped with an admonition.

 Saint Ignatius of Loyola, (1491 – July 31, 1556) was a Spanish knight from a Basque noble family, hermit, priest since 1537, and theologian, who founded the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) and became its first Superior General.  The Jesuits emerged during the Counter-Reformation in reaction of the Catholic Church against the theology of Protestantism.  Ignatius Loyola founded the so-called Society of Jesus (the Jesuits) in1534.  Approved by Pope Paul III in 1540, it immediately set to work either to destroy Protestantism or dilute its teachings, when assassination and warfare were not feasible.  For 450 years, its agents (brilliant men selected for their tenacity) have infiltrated governments, schools, and churches.  These men gradually rose to higher positions as additional agents were hired into the ranks.  He may have been a crypto-Jew.

  1534 Jesuits -The Society of Jesus is a Catholic religious order of clerks regular whose members are called Jesuits.  Jesuit priests and brothers are engaged in evangelization and apostolic ministry in 112 nations on six continents. They are best known in the fields of education (schools, colleges, universities, seminaries, and theological faculties), intellectual research, and cultural pursuits.  They are also known in missionary work, giving retreats, hospital and parish ministry, promoting justice and ecumenical dialogue. 

The founder of the Society of Jesus, St. Ignatius of Loyola, opened its charter and rule with this famous line: "Whoever desires to serve as a soldier of God beneath the banner of the cross in our Society, which we desire to be designated by the name of Jesus, and to serve the Lord alone and the Church, his spouse, under the Roman pontiff, the vicar of Christ on earth, should, after a solemn vow of perpetual chastity, poverty and obedience, keep what follows in mind.  He is a member of a Society founded chiefly for this purpose: to strive especially for the defense and propagation of the faith and for the progress of souls in Christian life and doctrine."  The Pope confesses to the head of the Jesuits, the Black Pope.

It is questioned to what extent Catholicism has been influenced by Judaism, for that matter any unified form of Christianity.  Any “Group” has its own priorities, not necessarily reflecting that of the people.  For instance, Catholicism does not want to defend our borders from illegal immigration, because it helps fill the coffers.

It is suggested that the Jesuits were founded by Jewish converts and catered to even more Jewish converses.  In 1593 the Society decreed that those of Jewish ancestry were henceforth forbidden from entering the Society.  The Jesuits have been the intellectual order and has strongly mixed with international intrigues and banking concerns.  Many countries have expelled the Jesuit order.  The Suppression of the Jesuits in the Portuguese Empire, France, the Two Sicilies, Parma and the Spanish Empire by 1767 was a result of a series of political moves rather than a theological controversy.

Clement XIV, who was the Pope from 1769 to 1774, tried to suppress the Jesuit Order in 1773. Whilst signing the Bull he said:  “I am signing my death warrant.  True enough he died shortly afterwards.  The Bull had declared itself to be...”… for ever effective… nor shall its meaning ever be rescinded, glossed or explained away.  In 1815, however, Pius VII issued a Bull reversing Clement’s own Bull and restoring the Jesuits.

The Jesuits were banned from Russia in 1786. In the USA, the money for the First Bank of North America and the First Bank of the United States came from the Jesuit's war chest.  The Jesuits were banished from Spain in 1820; from Portugal in 1834; from Spain in 1835; from Switzerland in 1848. In Italy their colleges and establishments were gradually taken from the Jesuits starting in 1859.  The Jesuits were banished (again) from Spain in 1868 and from Germany in 1872.  In Latin America the Jesuits were suppressed in Guatamala in 1872; in Mexico in 1873; in Brazil in 1874; in Equador and Columbia in 1875; and in Costa Rica in 1884. The Jesuits were banished from France in 1880 and again in 1901.

 Johann Georg Turmair (Thurmayr) or Johannes Aventinus (7/4, 1477 – 1/9, 1534) was a Bavarian humanist historian and philologist.  Aventinus is the Latinized name of his birthplace, Abensberg.  Aventinus wrote Annals of Bavaria, in seven books, which deal with the history of Bavaria in conjunction with general history from the earliest times to 1460, and the author shows sympathy for the Empire in its struggle with the Papacy.  In his Chronik, Aventinus fabricated a succession of Teutonic kings stretching back to the Great Flood, ruling over vast swathes of Germany and surrounding regions until the 1st century BC, and involving themselves in numerous events from Biblical and Classical history.  These rulers and their exploits are mostly fictitious, though some are derived from mythological, legendary or historical figures. Examples of the latter are Boiger, Kels II and Teutenbuecher, whose joint reign is given as 127–100 BC, and who are based on King Boiorix of the Cimbri, the unnamed king of the Ambrones, and King Teutobod of the Teutons.

      Dynasty of Tuitsch      Dynasty of Mader      Dynasty of Brenner III      Unknown dynastic affiliation

Ruler	Ruler	Ruler
Tuitsch 2214–2038	Adalger 1377–1328	Mader 644–589
Mannus 1978–1906	Larein 1328–1277	Brenner II & Koenman 589–479
Eingeb 1906–1870	Ylsing 1277–1224	Landein, Antör & Rögör 479–399
Ausstaeb 1870–1820	Brenner I 1224–1186	Brenner III 399–361
Herman 1820–1757	Heccar 1186–1155	Schirm & Brenner IV 361–263
Mers 1757–1711	Frank 1155–1114	Thessel, Lauther & Euring 279–194
Gampar 1711–1667	Wolfheim Siclinger 1114–1056	Dieth I & Diethmer 194–172
Schwab 1667–1621	Kels I, Gal & Hillyr 1056–1006	Baermund & Synpol 172–127
Wandler 1621–1580	Alber (& six unnamed others) 1006–946	Boiger, Kels II & Teutenbuecher 127–100
Deuto 1580–1553	Walther, Panno & Schard 946–884	Scheirer 100–70
Alman 1553–1489	Main, Öngel & Treibl 884–814	Ernst & Vocho 70–50
Baier 1489–1429	Myela, Laber & Penno 814–714	Pernpeist 50–40
Ingram 1429–1377	Venno & Helto 714–644	Cotz, Dieth II & Creitschir c.40–13

 Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus (10/28, 1466/1469– 7/12, 1536) was a Dutch Renaissance humanist and a Catholic priest and theologian. Erasmus was a classical scholar who wrote in a "pure" Latin style and enjoyed the sobriquet "Prince of the Humanists."  He has been called "the crowning glory of the Christian humanists."  Using humanist techniques for working on texts, he prepared important new Latin and Greek editions of the New Testament.  “What robbery and oppression of the poor there is by the Jews so that they cannot suffer any longer.  - God have mercy on them!  The Jewish usurers are fast-rooted even in the smallest villages, and if they lend five gulden they require a security of six times as much. They charge interest, upon interest, and upon this again interest, so that the poor man loses everything that he owns.”(1487)    “If to be a Christian is to hate the Jews, then we are all thoroughly Christian here.” –Erasmus.   In 1521, he envisioned a future of pan-European harmony.

 William Tyndale (c1492 – 1536) was an English scholar and translator who became a leading figure in Protestant reform toward the end of his life. He was influenced by the work of Desiderius Erasmus, who made the Greek New Testament available in Europe, and by Martin Luther. Tyndale was the first to translate considerable parts of the Bible from the original languages (Greek and Hebrew) into English.  “Thou art called a Jew….Thou preaches, a man should not steal: and yet thou stealest.  Thou sayest, a man should not commit advoutry: and thou breakest wedlock.  Thou abhorrest images, and robbest God of his honour.  Thou rejoices in the law, and through breaking the law dishonourest God.  For the name of God is evil spoken among the gentiles through you, as it is written.”

1537 - Pope Paul III orders that the Indigenous peoples of the Americas of the New World be brought to Christ "by the preaching of the divine word, and with the example of the good life."

 Dr. Johann Maier von Eck (11/13, 1486 – 2/13, 1543) was a German Scholastic theologian and defender of Catholicism during the Protestant Reformation.  It was Eck who argued that the beliefs of Martin Luther and Jan Hus were similar.  In 1541 Eck published his “Against the Defense of the Jews”.  In it he opposes the position of the Nuremberg reformer Andreas Osiander, who wanted to quash medieval superstition that Jews were responsible for killing Christian children, desecrating the eucharistic Host, and poisoning wells.  Osiander's pamphlet is “Whether It Be True and Credible That the Jews Secretly Strangulate Christian Children and Make Use of Their Blood”.  Eck accused Osiander of being a "Jew-protector" and "Jew-father," and no fewer than nineteen times reviled the Jews, culminating with the epithet for them: "a blasphemous race".

Ferdinand I (3/10, 1503 – 7/25, 1564) was Holy Roman Emperor from 1558, king of Bohemia and Hungary from 1526, and king of Croatia from 1527 until his death.  Before his accession, he ruled the Austrian hereditary lands of the Habsburgs in the name of his elder brother, Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor.  The key events during his reign were the contest with the Ottoman Empire, whose great advance into Central Europe began in the 1520s, and the Protestant Reformation, which resulted in several wars of religion.  He expelled the Austrian Jews in 1541 as a "dangerous and evil people," who had allegedly committed espionage in favor of the Turks then invading Europe. (Acta Imperial)

1542 Pope Paul III (Rome, Italy) -The Congregation of the Holy office - also known as the Roman Inquisition - was established, originally to counter Protestantism.  In 1555, when Cardinal Caraffa became Pope Paul IV, he immediately extended its operation, advocating the tracking down of all "suspects", especially conversos.  Until this date, many conversos had found refuge in the Papal States and were able to return to Judaism unmolested.  After this, the Inquisition operated within the Papal States, Venice, Milan, Naples, Mantua, and Tuscany.

****Jewish Piracy: The first Jewish pirates were converted Palestinians in about 100 BC.  Pirates could always sell their captives to the Romans. Jewish pirates were first mentioned by Josephus. In his The Jewish War Josephus wrote:  “They also built themselves a great many piratical ships, and turned pirates upon the seas near to Syria, and Phoenicia, and Egypt, and made those seas unnavigable to all men.”

After Jews were expelled from Spain and Portugal, many of them settled in the friendlier Muslim lands of the Mediterranean (the Ottoman Empire for example).  Like their Muslim compatriots who were likewise expelled in 1492, Jews were also looking to revenge Inquisition brutality by sharing with Muslims the newest military technique and secrets used by Christians.  And they also joined in on the Muslim Anti-Christian Piracy of the Mediterranean.  The English State Papers of 1521 bear evidences of daring Jewish pirates.  Jews were experienced cartographers. Jews also worked as the ship navigators.  The history of the Jewish people, the wars, the Diaspora, the Inquisitions, as well as knowledge and skills in ship navigation, were all contributing factors to the development of Jewish piracy.

The first Jews landed on Jamaica in 1530 just 40 years after it was discovered by Christopher Columbus.  Jewish pirates of Jamaica named their ships for ancient Jewish heroes and prophets like Prophet Samuel, Queen Esther and Shield of Abraham.

 Moses Cohen Henriques was a Dutch pirate of Portuguese Sephardic Jewish origin, operating in the Caribbean.  Henriques helped Dutch naval officer and folk hero Admiral Piet Pieterszoon Hein, of the Dutch West India Company, capture the Spanish treasure fleet in the battle of the Bay of Matanzas in Cuba, during the Eighty Years' War, in 1628.  In the 1630s, they ambushed Spanish gold bearing ships and robbed the Spanish empire of what would be considered roughly one billion dollars in Gold bullion in today’s economy.  Afterwards they became masters at tracking and robbing the Spanish and often acted as paid mercenaries to the enemies of Spain.  Henriques then went on to lead a Jewish contingent in Brazil during the Dutch rule, and established his own pirate island off the Brazilian coast.  After the Portuguese recapture of Northern Brazil in 1654, Moses fled South America and ended up as an advisor to Henry Morgan, the leading pirate of the time.

Sinan, called The Great Jew by the Spaniards, was one such Jewish refugee.  His family emigrated from Spain to the Ottoman Empire.  He first was a second in command of a pirate ship under Hayreddin Barbarossa, but later became the captain himself.  Although Barbarossa was feared by Christian countries, he was not a naval commander himself.  Sinan, whom the Turks called Kaptan Pasha (Lord Captain), was his favorite captain and the one who actually battled the enemies.  Sinan's pirate flag (like many of the contemporary Ottoman naval flags) displayed a six-pointed star, called the Seal of Süleyman (Solomon) by the Ottomans.  His legacy includes capturing Tunis from Spain in 1534, destruction of most Spain's fleet in 1538 and capturing Tripoli in 1551.  Six thousand men were under his command.  The Ottomans appointed him to be a naval commander.  He is buried in a Jewish cemetery in Albania.  Yaakov Koriel was a captain of the Spanish fleet until he was caught by the Inquisition.  He was freed by his sailors, most of whom were Marranos themselves.  For many years after that his only goal was revenge.  Some believe that eventually he made his way to the Holy Land, studied Kabbalah and died peacefully of old age.

 Jean Lafitte (ca. 1776 – ca. 1823, a Sephardic Jew who took to pirating was the famous Jean Lafitte who created a small thieving empire in the swamps of New Orleans.  Jean Lafitte is credited with supplying Andrew Jackson with weaponry and over 1000 men to hold off the British on January 8th 1815.  Lafitte was known as one of the Marranos, or Sephardic Jews who openly converted to Catholicism and secretly worshipped as a Jew.  He was expelled from New Orleans in 1817 and later set camp up in what’s now Galveston Bay, Texas.

Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503 – 10/11, 1542) was an English lyrical poet credited with introducing the sonnet into English.  Wyatt was over six feet tall, reportedly both handsome and physically strong.  Wyatt was not only a poet, but also an ambassador in the service of Henry VIII.  The Penitential Psalms are a group of seven psalms from the Old Testament: 6, 32, 38, 51, 102, 130, and 143.  Wyatt translated these Psalms.

François Rabelais (c. 1494 – April 9, 1553) was a major French Renaissance writer, doctor and Renaissance humanist.  He has historically been regarded as a writer of fantasy, satire, the grotesque, and bawdy jokes and songs.  Most scholars today agree that the French author wrote from a perspective of Christian humanism.  Hilaire Belloc praised him as "at the summit" of authors of fantastic books.  George Orwell called him "an exceptionally perverse, morbid writer, a case for psychoanalysis."  “The Life of Gargantua and of Pantagruel” is a connected series of five novels.  It is the story of two giants, a father (Gargantua) and his son (Pantagruel) and their adventures, written in an amusing, extravagant, satirical vein.

Nicolaus Copernicus (2/19, 1473 – 5/24, 1543) was a Renaissance astronomer and the first person to formulate a comprehensive heliocentric cosmology, which displaced the Earth from the center of the universe.  The prevailing theory in Europe during Copernicus' lifetime was the one that Ptolemy published in his Almagest circa 150 CE.  The most popular modern geocentric description consists of a stationary Earth (neither rotating nor orbiting the sun) at the center of the universe.  As in the Tychonic system, the Sun is thought to revolve around the Earth once per day, and the rest of the solar system orbits the Sun with Keplerian orbits.  Modern geocentrists have been known to point to certain astronomical observations as evidence which could be interpreted as placing the earth at the center of the universe. 

 1543 Martin Luther writes “On the Jews and Their Lies” after spending half of his career reaching out to them.  History of Judaic theology is a direct expansion and interpretation of Phariseeism.   Wrote Concerning the Jews and their Lies.  As an ally of anti-Catholic Reuchlin, he wrote a pro-Jewish work in 1520 called Jesus was a Jew. Luther expected the Jews to join his revolution, and when they rejected his views he became bitter.  He called for the Jews to be slaves to the serfs, so as not to touch the hand of a German Christian.  His attacks were generally not based upon the vicious and virulent anti-Jewish writings of past Christians, i.e. Chrysostom.

1543 February 19, House of Catechumens (Casa dei Catecumeni) (Italy) -Was established by the Vatican.  The sole purpose of the house, supported by forced Jewish taxation, was to convert Jews.  A person sent there was subjected to 40 days of intense "instruction".  If he still refused baptism after that time, he was allowed to return to his home - but few did.  Around 2440 Jews were converted in Rome alone before it was abolished in 1810.  Other houses were set up in various Italian cities.

Martin Luther, 16th century German religious reformer:

“They are the real liars and bloodhounds, who have not only perverted and falsified the entire Scriptures from beginning to end and without ceasing with their interpretations. And all of the anxious sighing, longing and hope of their hearts is directed to the time when some day they would like to deal with us as they dealt with the heathen in Persia at the time of Esther... 0 how they love that Book of Esther, which is so suitable to their bloodthirsty, revengeful, murderous appetite and hopes!  The sun has never shown on such a bloodthirsty and revengeful people, who fancy themselves to be the chosen people so they can murder and strangle the heathen.  And the foremost under-taking which they expect of their Messiah is that he should slay and murder the whole world with their sword.  As they at first demonstrated against us Christians and would like to do so now, if they only could; have tried it often and have been repeatedly struck on their snouts.

No people under the sun are greedier than they are, than they have been and always will be, as one can see from their accursed usury.  They console themselves that when their Messiah comes, he will collect all the gold and silver in the world and divide it amongst them.

The Princes and authorities sit and snore with open mouths and let the Jews take, steal and rob what they want out of their open purses and chests.  That is, they permit themselves and their subjects to be skinned and sucked dry by the Jews' usury, and make themselves, with their own money, beggars in their own State...  The Jews have got our money and property, and are therefore our masters in our own land where they are in exile...  And as a distinguishing mark, they strengthen their faith and bitter hatred against us by saying among themselves: “Keep on, see how God is with us and does not forsake His people in exile.  We do not work, we enjoy good, lazy days; the cursed Goyim must work for us, we get their money; thereby we are their masters, they, however, our servants.  Keep on, dear Children of Israel, it will be better still!  Our Messiah will come if we thus continue and appropriate to ourselves, by usury, the 'Hemdath' (possessions) of the heathen!”

Since childhood they have devoured such poisonous hatred against the Goyim from their parents and rabbis, and still devour such without ceasing, that flesh and blood, bone and marrow, and has become their life and being.  And as little as they can alter flesh and blood, bone and marrow, so little can they change such pride and envy.  They just have to stay that way and be ruined, if God does not perform a special miracle.

Therefore know, my dear Christian, that next to the devil you have no more bitter, more poisonous, more vehement an enemy than a real Jew who earnestly desires to be a Jew.

It all agrees with the judgement of Christ that they are poisonous, bitter, vindictive and malicious serpents, assassins and children of the devils who kill and inflict injuries by stealth because they cannot do so openly.

Martin Luther – “The Jews and Their Lies”, pages 17, 27, 28, 29 and 30.

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The sun never did shine on a more bloodthirsty and revengeful people as they, who imagine to be the people of God, and who desire to and think they must murder and crush the heathen.  And the foremost undertaking which they expect of their Messiah is that he should slay and murder the whole world with the sword.  As they at first demonstrated against us Christians and would like to do now, if they only could; have also tried it often and have been repeatedly struck on their snouts...

Their breath stinks for the gold and silver of the heathen; since no people under the sun always have been, still are, and always will remain more avaricious than they, as can be noticed in their cursed usury.  They also find comfort with this: "When the Messiah comes, He shall take all the gold and silver in the world and distribute it among the Jews.  Thus, wherever they can direct Scripture to their insatiable avarice, they wickedly do so.

Therefore know, my dear Christians, that next to the Devil, you have no more bitter, more poisonous, more vehement and enemy than a real Jew who earnestly desires to be a Jew.  There may be some among them who believe what the cow or the goose believes.  But all of them are surrounded with their blood and circumcision. In history, therefore, they are often accused of poisoning wells, stealing children and mutilating them; as in Trent, Weszensee and the like.  Of course they deny this.  Be it so or not, however, I know full well that the ready will is not lacking with them if they could only transform it into deeds, in secret or openly.

A person who does not know the Devil, might wonder why they are so at enmity with the Christians above all others; for which they have no reason, since we only do good to them.

They live among us in our homes, under our protection, use land and highways, market and streets.  Princes and government sit by, snore and have their maws open, let the Jews take from their purse and chest, steal and rob whatever they will.  That is, they permit themselves and their subjects to be abused and sucked dry and reduced to beggars with their own money, through the usury of the Jews.  For the Jews, as foreigners, certainly should have nothing from us; and what they have certainly must be ours.  They do not work, do not earn anything from us, neither do we donate or give it to them. Yet they have our money and goods and are lords in our land where they are supposed to be in exile!

If a thief steals ten gulden he must hang; if he robs people on the highway, his head is gone.  But a Jew, when he steals ten tons of gold through his usury is dearer than God himself!

Do not their TALMUD and rabbis write that it is no sin to kill if a Jew kills a heathen, but it is a sin if he kills a brother in Israel?  It is no sin if he does not keep his oath to a heathen.  Therefore, to steal and rob (as they do with their moneylending) from a heathen, is a divine service... And they are the masters of the world and we are their servants - yea, their cattle!

I maintain that in three fables of Aesop there is more wisdom to be found than in all the books of the Talmudists and rabbis and more than ever could come into the hearts of the Jews...

Should someone think I am saying too much - I am saying much too little!  For I see in [their] writings how they curse us Goyim and wish as all evil in their schools and prayers.  They rob us of our money through usury, and wherever they are able, they play us all manner of mean tricks... No heathen has done such things and none would to so except the Devil himself and those whom he possesses - as he possesses the Jews.

Burgensis, who was a very learned rabbi among them and by the grace of God became a Christian (which seldom occurs), is much moved that in their schools they so horribly curse us Christians (as Lyra also writes) and from that draws the conclusion that they must not be the people of God.

Now behold what a nice, thick, fat lie it is when they complain about being captives among us! Jerusalem was destroyed more than 1,400 years ago during that time we Christians have been tortured and persecuted by the Jews in the entire world.  On top of that, we do not know to this day what Devil brought them into our country. We did not fetch them from Jerusalem! … Yes, we have and hold them captive, as I would like to keep my rheumatism, and all other diseases and misfortunes, which must wait as a poor servant, with money and property and everything I have!  I wish they were in Jerusalem with the other Jews and whomsoever they would like to have with them.

Now what are we going to do with these rejected, condemned Jewish people? ... Let us apply the ordinary wisdom of other nations like France, Spain, Bohemia, et al., who made them give an account of what they had stolen through usury, and divided it evenly; but expelled them from their country.  For as heard before, God's wrath is so great over them that through soft mercy they only become more wicked, through hard treatment, however, only a little better.  Therefore, away with them!

How much more unbearable it is that we should permit the entire Christendom and all of us to be bought with our own money, be slandered and cursed by the Jews, who on top of all that be made rich and our lords, who laugh us to scorn and are tickled by their audacity!

What a joyful affair that would be for the Devil and his angels, and cause them to laugh through their snouts like a sow grinning at her little pigs, but deserving real wrath before God. (From THE JEWS AND THEIR LIES)

Maybe mild-hearted and gentle Christians will believe that I am too rigorous and drastic against the poor, afflicted Jews, believing that I ridicule them and treat them with much sarcasm.  By my word, I am far too weak to be able to ridicule such a satanic brood.  I would fain to do so, but they are far greater adepts at mockery than I and possess a god who is master in this art. It is the Evil One himself.

Even with no further evidence than the Old Testament, I would maintain, and no person on earth could alter my opinion, that the Jews as they are today are veritably a mixture of all the depraved and malevolent knaves of the whole world over, who have then been dispersed in all countries, similarly to the Tartars, Gypsies and such folk." //

“What shall we do with this accursed race? Burn their synagogues, homes and books; forbid their rabbis to teach; not allow them to travel; compel them to renounce banking and finance and earn their living ‘by the sweat of their noses’.

"Set Jewish synagogues on fire for the honor of God.  God will see we are Christians when we get rid of the Jews.  Likewise homes should be destroyed; they should be put in a stable; they are not heirs of promises of God and deserve to die.  Deprive them of all prayer shawls, prayer books and communication, revoke all passports, stop them from doing all business, everything they possess we believe they stole and robbed from us.  They do not have God's blessings, drive them out of the country ... get rid of them."

Table Talk of Martin Luther, translated by William Hazlet, page 43 - "But the Jews are so hardened that they listen to nothing; though overcome by testimonies they yield not an inch.  It is a pernicious race, oppressing all men by their usury and rapine. If they give a prince or magistrate a thousand florins, they extort twenty thousand from the subjects in payment.  We must ever keep on guard against them."

Martin Luther, in a sermon at Eisleben, a few days before his death, February, 1546 -"Besides, you also have many Jews living in the country, who do much harm...  You should know the Jews blaspheme and violate the name of our Savior day for day... for that reason you, Milords and men of authority, should not tolerate but expel them.  They are our public enemies and incessantly blaspheme our Lord Jesus Christ, they call our Blessed Virgin Mary a harlot and her Holy Son a bastard and to us they give the epithet of changelings and abortions.  If they could kill us all, they would gladly do so: in fact, many of them murder Christians, especially those professing to be surgeons and doctors. They know how to deal medicaments in the manner of the Itahans - the Borgias and Medicis - who gave people poison which brought about their death in one hour or in a month.  Therefore deal with them harshly as they do nothing but excruciatingly blaspheme our Lord Jesus Christ, trying to rob us of our lives, our health, our honor and belongings."

“Ye Jews have been, above fifteen hundred years, a race rejected of God, without government, without laws, without prophets, without temple... Ye can show no other reason for your condition than your sins.” -Martin Luther

(Of the Unknowable Name and the Generations of Christ), by Martin Luther in 1543, in which he equated Jews with the Devil and described them in vile language.  Schem Hamphoras (Unknowable Name) is the Hebrew rabbinic name for the ineffable name of God, the tetragrammaton. Luther's use of the term was in itself a taunt and insult to Jewish sensitivities.  He wrote the tract several months after publishing On the Jews and Their Lies.  In the book he wrote:  "Here in Wittenberg, in our parish church, there is a sow carved into the stone under which lie young pigs and Jews who are sucking; behind the sow stands a rabbi who is lifting up the right leg of the sow, raises behind the sow, bows down and looks with great effort into the Talmud under the sow, as if he wanted to read and see something most difficult and exceptional; no doubt they gained their Shem Hamphoras from that place..."  Luther argued that the Jews were no longer the chosen people but "the devil's people".

 Judensau (German for "Jews' sow" or "Jewish sow") is an image of Jews in obscene contact with a large sow (female pig), which in Judaism is an unclean animal, that appeared during the 13th century in Germany and some other European countries; its popularity lasted for over 600 years.  The city of Wittenberg contains a Judensau from 1305, on the facade of the church where Martin Luther preached.  It portrays a rabbi who looks under the sow's tail, and other Jews drinking from its teats.  Some of these sculptures can be found at some churches today.: Aarschot (Notre Dame Church), Bamberg (Cathedral), Basel in Switzerland (Cathedral), Brandenburg (Cathedral), Cadolzburg, Colmar, Église Saint-Martin (2 representations), Cologne, underside of a choir-stall seat in the Cathedral (probably the earliest example) and in Church of St. Severin), Eberswalde, Erfurt (Cathedral), Gniezno in Poland (Cathedral), Heilsbronn (Cathedral), Lemgo (St. Marien), Magdeburg (Cathedral), Metz in France (Cathedral), Nuremberg (St. Sebaldus Church), Regensburg (Cathedral), Remagen (Gate post), Uppsala in Sweden (Cathedral), Wiener Neustadt in Austria, Wimpfen (Church of St. Peter), Wittenberg (Town church), Xanten (Cathedral), Zerbst (St. Nicolas Church)

 The Jewish Bacchanal of Purim

Philipp Melanchthon (2/16, 1497 – 4/19, 1560), born Philipp Schwartzerdt, was a German reformer, collaborator with Martin Luther, the first systematic theologian of the Protestant Reformation, intellectual leader of the Lutheran Reformation, and an influential designer of educational systems.  He stands next to Luther and Calvin as a reformer, theologian, and molder of Protestantism.  As much as Luther, he is the primary founder of Lutheranism.  Melanchthon was a great-nephew of the Hebraist and Christian kabbalist Johann Reuchlin, who taught him Hebrew and supervised his education.

(After which this famous cartoonist was banned from several US newspapers.)

  **** Supersessionism and replacement theology or fulfillment theology are Christian interpretations of New Testament claims, viewing God's relationship with Christians as being either the "replacement" or "fulfillment" or "completion" of the promise made to the Jews (or Israelites).  Some have preferred “continuation” theology, as in reference to true, godly disciples of the Old and New Coveants.  This has been the historic position of the Catholic and Orthodox Churches.  Yet, Christianity has always had a positive view of Judaism.  It has considered God working through Israel of the Old Testament and that Jews would eventually come back to the true faith.  Christians have evangelized Jews until repelled.  Less churched Gentiles have been more honest with daily realities of Jewish Supremacy.   Protestants wanting to return to original teachings of Christ identified more closely with what they considered true Israel.   The Old Testament was raised to a higher profile and the place of a converted Israel was placed strongly in prophecy.  Christian Americans identified strongly with Israel as believers entering a new land.  Meanings of prophecy and interpretations of the Scriptures became more philo-Judaic.  Leaving churches with traditional catechisms, Evangelicals have been less inclined to study Scripture systematically and scholastically, deflecting biblical criticism.  Through the years since the Reformation, Jews have become a stronger influence in Christianity, leading Christians to Jewish ideals and directions.  As God allowed pagans to chastise the Jews in the Old Testament, it may be up to pagans or less propagandized Christians to rectify our current Jewish system.

Biblical Criticism developing after the Reformation shows that much of Israelite history in the Torah was actually manufactured origins for the Israelite nation.  Also Archeology shows very little proof of many early Israelite figures and exaggerated claims for the Israelite Kingdom.  There is even a tempting thesis using linguistics that the peoples making up Israel were in Asir (close to Yemen), Saudi Arabia before the Babylonian Exile in 586 BC.

****The term Jew can be defined in a dozen ways. Jews, themselves, are primarily Talmudic, Zionist or Secular.  Before 1948 and the turning points of 1967 & 1973, most Jews in the US were not Zionist.  Now they primarily are Zionists. Many are even Dual Citizens.  Many US Policy Makers are Dual Citizens with split allegiance between the US and Israel.  This timeline is not anti-Semetic.  No one can be blamed for accident of birth.  Most common Jews have no inkling of the magnitude of this covert war.   Yet most Jews are participants inasmuch as they think of themselves as “chosen”.

The English word Jew continues Middle English Gyw, Iewe, a loan from Old French giu, earlier juieu, ultimately from Latin Iudaeum.  The Latin Iudaeus simply means Judaean, "from the land of Judaea".  It is used as, "Jude" in German, "juif" in French, "judío" in Spanish, etc., and derivations of the word "Hebrew" are also used.  The German word "Jude" is the origin of the word Yid and Yiddish. PC language says that the  use of the noun Jew, in phrases such as Jew lawyer or Jew ethics, is vulgar and highly offensive.  Saying Jews is offensive.  Saying Jewish is offensive.  They do not want to be recognized. 

 **** Cabala (alternately Kabbala(h) or Qabala(h)) may refer to one of several systems of Mysticism:  Kabbalah, the religious mystical system of Judaism.  Practical Kabbalah is an agglomeration of all the magical practices that developed in Judaism from the Talmudic period down through the Middle Ages.  Christian Kabbalah, the Christian application of Jewish Kabbalistic methods.  Hermetic Qabalah is a Western esoteric and mystical tradition drawing on Jewish Kabbalah and other sources.  English Qabalah, one of several different systems of Hermetic Qabalah that interpret the letters of the English or Latin alphabet as number and symbol.  Kabbalah ("receiving") is a discipline and school of thought concerned with the mystical aspect of Judaism.  It is a set of esoteric teachings meant to explain the relationship between an eternal/mysterious Creator and the mortal/finite universe (His creation).  [Professing to become wise, they became fools.  Similar to basic Talmudism in that the clear meaning can be interpreted as practically the opposite.]

According to the Zohar, a foundational text for kabbalistic thought, Torah study can proceed along four levels of interpretation (exegesis).   These four levels are called Pardes because their initial letters spell "PaRDeS" ("Orchard"): Peshat (lit. "simple"): the direct interpretations of meaning.  / Remez (lit. "hint[s]"): the allegoric meanings (through allusion).  / Derash (from Heb. darash: "inquire" or "seek"): midrashic (Rabbinic) meanings, often with imaginative comparisons with similar words or verses.  / Sod (lit. "secret" or "mystery"): the inner, esoteric (metaphysical) meanings, expressed in kabbalah.

Kabbalah is considered, by its followers, as a necessary part of the study of Torah – the study of Torah (the "Teachings" of God, in the Tanach and Rabbinic literature) being an inherent duty of observant Jews.  Kabbalah teaches doctrines that are accepted by some Jews as the true meaning of Judaism while other Jews have rejected these doctrines as heretical and antithetical to Judaism. After the Medieval Kabbalah, and especially after its 16th Century development and synthesis, Kabbalah replaced "Hakira" (Jewish philosophy) as the mainstream traditional Jewish theology, both in scholarly circles and in the popular imagination.  With the arrival of modernity, through the influence of Haskalah, this has changed among non-Orthodox Jewish denominations, though its 20th Century academic study and cross-denominational spiritual applications (especially through Neo-Hasidism), has reawakened a following beyond Orthodoxy.

 ****Playing cards were invented in China as early as the 9th century.  Ancient Chinese "money cards" have four "suits": coins (or cash), strings of coins (which may have been misinterpreted as sticks from crude drawings), myriads (of coins or of strings), and tens of myriads (where a myriad is 10000).  Playing cards first entered Europe in the late 14th century.  The first known tarot cards were created between 1430 and 1450 in Milan, Ferrara and Bologna in northern Italy when additional trump cards with allegorical illustrations were added to the common four-suit pack.  Divination using playing cards is in evidence as early as 1540 in a book.

 ****The Tarot (is a pack of cards (most commonly numbering 78), used from the mid-15th century in various parts of Europe to play a group of card games such as Italian tarocchini and French tarot.  From the late 18th century until the present time the tarot has also found use by mystics and occultists in efforts at divination or as a map of mental and spiritual pathways.  The cards are traced by some occult writers to ancient Egypt or the Kabbalah but there is no documented evidence of such origins or of the usage of tarot for divination before the 18th century.

 Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim (9/15, 1486 – 2/18, 1535) was a German magician, occult writer, theologian, astrologer, and alchemist.  In 1913, his works are republished.

 Paracelsus (born Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim, 11/11, or 12/17, 1493 – 9/24, 1541) was a German-Swiss Renaissance physician, botanist, alchemist, astrologer, and general occultist.  He is also credited for giving zinc its name, calling it zincum.  Paracelsus pioneered the use of chemicals and minerals in medicine.  As a result of this hermetical idea of harmony, the universe's macrocosm was represented in every person as a microcosm.  According to the insights at the time, there were Seven planets in the sky, Seven metals on Earth and Seven centers (or major organs) in Man — seven was a special number.  Everything was heavenly and closely interrelated.  Diseases were caused by poisons brought here from the stars. But 'poisons' were not necessarily something negative.  He summarized his own views: “Many have said of Alchemy, that it is for the making of gold and silver. For me such is not the aim, but to consider only what virtue and power may lie in medicines.” 

Planet      Metal      Organ

Sun          Gold        Heart

Moon       Silver       Brain

Jupiter     Tin           Liver

Venus      Copper     Kidneys

Saturn     Lead        Spleen

Mars        Iron          Gall bladder

Mercury   Quicksilver Lungs

Paracelsus, sometimes called the father of toxicology, wrote: "All things are poison, and nothing is without poison; only the dose permits something not to be poisonous."  That is to say, substances considered toxic are harmless in small doses, and conversely an ordinarily harmless substance can be deadly if over-consumed.

****Jewish Professions -Jews throughout the world and throughout history have been engaged in many occupations, but mostly dominate several including Banking, Precious stones and metals, and vices such as White Slavery, Drugs, War Profits, Alcohol.  They are in charge of a majority of organized crime.  Monopolizing Media is a goal.  This was true during the Weimar years in Germany, with 90% of the Media and Entertainment controlled by Jews.  Currently true throughout the West at 90%+.   Jewish Supremacy doesn’t follow the Golden Rule and Talmudic writings enforce the abuse of Gentiles.  Their prayer of Kol Nidre negates all honesty for each future year.  Banking was not forfeited to the Jews as the only career open to them.  Many times Kings and Emperors tried to get them into other occupations.  Most recently the Tsars in the late 1800’s and the Nazi party have tried.

 Joseph ben Ephraim Karo (Toledo, 1488 – Safed, 1575) was author of the last great codification of Jewish law, the Shulchan Aruch, which is still authoritative for all Jews pertaining to their respective communities.  To this end he is often referred to as (The Author) and as (Our Master).  His reputation during the last thirty years of his life was greater than that of almost any other rabbi since Maimonides.  Some of his assertions: “Marriages taking place amongst Gentiles have no binding strength: their cohabitation is just as the coupling of Horses, therefore, their children do not stand as humanly related to their parents.” “It is always a meritorious deed to get hold of a Gentile’s possessions.”  “If a Jew has raped a non-Jewish girl, and another who saw it is called as a witness, that Jew must, without compunction, swear falsely.”  “An animal which has been slaughtered by a Gentile…is to be considered as a diseased animal.”  A Goi or a servant is not capable of acting as a witness.”  “It is a good deed for every Jew to burn and destroy the non-Jewish church or whatever belongs to it or is done for it, …Furthermore, it is the duty of every Jews to try to uproot every non-Jewish church and to give it a curse name.”  “Every Jew has the obligation to see that Christian churches are burned down and wiped out.  The faithful must be insulted and the clergy killed…”  “It is permitted to deride idols (Jesus), and it is forbidden to say to a Goi: May your God help you, or I hope you will succeed.”  “Therefore if you enter a town and find them celebrating a feast, you may pretend to rejoice with them in order to hide your hatred.” “It is forbidden to give free gifts to the Christian…No one is allowed to praise them or to say how good an Akum is.”  “If a Jew is doing business with an Akum it is not allowed to other Jews, in certain places, to come and do business with the same Akum.  In other places, however, it is different, where other Jews is allowed to go to the same Akum, lead him on, do business with him and to deceive him and take his money.  For the wealth of the Akum is to be regarded as a common property and belongs to the first who can get it.””A Jew may do to a non-Jewess what he can do.  He may treat her as a piece of raw meat.”  “A Jew may rob a goy, that is, he may cheat him in a bill, if unlikely to be perceived by him.” ”It is permitted to kill a Jewish denunciator everywhere.  It is permitted to kill him even before he denounces.” 

The Shulchan Aruch (Set Table) also known as the Code of Jewish Law, is the most authoritative legal code of Judaism.  It was authored in Safed, Ottoman Eyalet of Damascus, by Yosef Karo in 1563.  Together with its commentaries, it is the most widely accepted compilation of Jewish law ever written.  The halachic rulings in the Shulchan Aruch generally follow Sephardic law and customs whereas Ashkenazi Jews will generally follow the halachic rulings of Moses Isserles whose glosses to the Shulchan Aruch note where the Sephardic and Ashkenazic customs differ. These glosses are widely referred to as the mappah (tablecloth) to the Shulchan Aruch's "Set Table".  Almost all published editions of the Shulchan Aruch include this gloss, and the term "Shulchan Aruch" has come to denote both Karo's work as well as Isserlis', with Karo usually referred to as "the mechaber" ("author") and Isserles as "the Rema".

 Moses Isserles (1520 – 5/11, 1572), was an eminent Ashkenazic rabbi, Talmudist, and posek, renowned for his fundamental work of Halakha (Jewish law), entitled ha-Mapah (tablecloth), an inline commentary on the Shulchan Aruch, upon which his "great reputation as a halakist and codifier rests chiefly."  

The 100 main laws of Shulchan Aruch  (Akum means non-Jews, Laws of the Talmud classify Christians as idol worshippers) Taken from the book: “Thorn Crown of Russia: The Puzzle of the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion” By Oleg Platonov; Moscow (1999) – Practically all refer to Akum: 2:Akum are not considered people; 4:the cross is cursed; 6:a Jew, who becomes Akum is cursed and 5)the family is defiled; 17:Don’t stop a plague among pigs or Akum; 18:"Cursed be Haman and all of Akum and Blessed be Mordecai and all the Jews"; 19:Akum can be sentenced to death even if the crime did not deserve the death penalty; 20:Any resolution with Akum is wrong; 21:a Jew cannot witness for the Akum against another Jew; 24:    Money of Akum is ownerless; 25:Jews are to  monopolize business; 26:Judgments are always to favor the Jew; 27:okay to deceive Akum; 34:Akum lost property is allowed to be kept; 36: Jew is not obliged to pay the inheritance to Akum's heirs; 37:okay to cheat goy; 38:okay to steal from Akum;     When a Jew buys something from a thief and sells it to another Jew, and Akum comes and declares it stolen from him and takes it away (stolen); 42:robbing Jews is forbidden. But with Akum it is allowed; 44:Jew may evade taxes; 45:It is allowed to kill a traitor before he can snitch; 47:Jew is not obliged to compensate Akum for his loss; 49:Jew may keep vicious dog to bite Akum; 50:It is not allowed to a Jew to save Akum from death; 51:a Jew who became an Akum, must be regarded by Jews as carrion; 54:Rabbis have forbidden to eat bread baked by Akum, or anything cooked by Akum, or drink his liquor, as it may lead to socially friendly relations; 55:It is always a good deed to snatch something from Akum; 66:excessively high interest rates loaning to Akum is allowed; 71:A Jew is forbidden to take off his hat before the kings or priests, who have a cross on their dress or a cross worn on the chest, so it does not look like he makes a bow before the cross; 74:Jew is forbidden to praise Akum for his virtues; 76:A Jew is forbidden to send his child to a Christian school or to take him to a Christian craftsman to learn some skill; 81:It is not a direct duty for a Jew to kill an Akum with whom he lives in peace; but it is strictly prohibited to save an Akum from death. Furthermore, a Jew is forbidden to treat an Akum even if he is paid; 83:It is forbidden to a Jew to assimilate among Akum; 85:a Jew is allowed to swear falsely; 87:A Jew is strictly forbidden from accepting a charity from an Akum; 88:Marriages among Akum have no binding force, ie their cohabitation is equivalent to mating horses.; 89:Jews are not allowed to let Akum glean their fields; 91:No need to be sad about Akum and slaves, and no need to conduct a send off for them when they die; 96:When Akuma (Christian) marries an akum female (Christian), or when the Jew, who converted to Christianity, marries a Jewess, who also became a Christian, then their marriages have no legal force; 97:beating an Akum is not a sin of any kind; 98:Akum should be regarded not as people but as a horses.

 Ivan the Awesome.  He became ruler in 1547; his long reign saw the conquest of the Khanates of Kazan, Astrakhan, and Siberia, transforming Russia into a multiethnic and multiconfessional state spanning almost 1 billion acres, growing during his term at a rate of approximately 130 square kilometers a day.  Ivan oversaw numerous changes in the transition from a medieval nation state to an empire and emerging regional power, and became the first Tsar of a new and more powerful nation.  There is a movement to make him a saint for his piety.  He refused to allow Jews to live in his kingdom.  Ivan, answering a demand by King Sigismund Augustus of Poland that Russia admit Jewish traders and money-lenders' replied: “It is not convenient to allow Jews to come with their goods to Russia, since many evils result from them.  For they import poisonous herbs into our realms, and lead astray the Russians from Christianity.” (Aha, this is why he was called ‘terrible’.) 

 Ivan IV Vasilyevich (8/25 1530 – 3/28 1584), known as Ivan the Terrible (perhaps Awesome), was Grand Prince of Moscow from 1533. He became ruler in 1547; his long reign saw the conquest of the Khanates of Kazan, Astrakhan, and Siberia, transforming Russia into a multiethnic and multiconfessional state.  Ivan managed countless changes in the progression from a medieval state to an empire and emerging regional power, and became the first ruler to be crowned as Tsar of All Russia.  There is a movement to make him a saint for his piety.  He refused to allow Jews to live in his kingdom.  Ivan, answering a demand by King Sigismund Augustus of Poland that Russia admit Jewish traders and money-lenders' replied:  “It is not convenient to allow Jews to come with their goods to Russia, since many evils result from them.  For they import poisonous herbs into our realms, and lead astray the Russians from Christianity.” (In answer to a demand by King Sigismund Augustus of Poland that Russia admit Jewish traders and money-lenders. Cited by S. Dubnow, Die Grundlagen des Nationalen Judentums (The Foundations of the National Jewish)).  Jewish commentators have scoffed at Ivan's "poisonous herbs" statement; others have had the same idea. 

Beatus Bild (Beatus Rhenanus) (8/22 1485 – 7/20 1547), was an Alsatian humanist, religious reformer, and classical scholar.  “No people have so hated others as the Jewish people have; in turn, no people have been so loathed or have so justly provoked implacable hatred” (J. Janssen)

1550         1550         1550         1550

1550 “O Tannenbaum” German Folk Song about 1550.  O Christmas tree, o Christmas tree How loyal are your leaves/needles! You're green not only in the summertime, No, also in winter when it snows. O Christmas tree, o Christmas tree How loyal are your leaves/needles! // O Christmas tree, o Christmas tree You can please me very much! How often has not at Christmastime A tree like you given me such joy! O Christmas tree, o Christmas tree, You can please me very much! // O Christmas tree, o Christmas tree Your dress wants to   teach me something: Your hope and durability Provide comfort and strength   at any time. O Christmas tree, o Christmas tree, That's what your dress should teach me.

 A Christmas tree is usually an evergreen conifer.  The tree was traditionally decorated with edibles such as apples, nuts or dates.  In the 18th century, it began to be illuminated by candles, which with electrification could also be replaced by Christmas lights.   An angel or star may be placed at the top of the tree, to represent the host of angels or the Star of Bethlehem from the Nativity.  The custom of the Christmas tree developed in early modern Germany with predecessors that can be traced to the 16th and possibly the 15th century.  It acquired popularity beyond Germany during the second half of the 19th century.  Its 16th-century origins are sometimes associated with Martin Luther.  It is frequently traced to the symbolism of evergreen trees in supposed "pre-Christian winter rites", especially with the story of the Donar Oak and Saint Boniface.  Alternatively, it is identified with the "tree of Paradise" of medieval mystery plays that were given on December 24, the commemoration and name day of Adam and Eve in various countries. In such plays, a tree decorated with apples (to represent the forbidden fruit) and wafers (to represent the Eucharist and redemption) was used as a setting for the play.  Like the Christmas crib, the Paradise tree was later placed in homes.  The apples were replaced by round objects such as shiny red balls.

The Masque was a form of festive courtly entertainment which flourished in 16th and early 17th century Europe, though it was developed earlier in Italy, in forms including the intermedio (a public version of the masque was the pageant).  A masque involved music and dancing, singing and acting, within an elaborate stage design.

Julius III. Pope Julius III (9/10, 1487 – 3/23, 1555), born Giovanni Maria Ciocchi del Monte, was Pope from February 7, 1550 to 1555. Contra Hebreos retinentes libros (1554) ordered the TALMUD burned "everywhere" and established a strict censorship over Jewish genocidal writings - an order that has never been rescinded and which presumably is still binding upon Catholics.  On Rosh Hashanah, the Talmud was confiscated and publicly burned in Rome.  This burning was held under the auspices of Cardinal Caraffa, later to be Pope Paul IV, with the backing of Pope Julius III.  Caraffa, a rabid counter-Reformationist, chose this day specifically so the Jews would feel the grief more strongly.  Talmud burning spread through much of Italy.

 Basil the Blessed (known also as Basil, fool for Christ) (1468-1552(57)) is a Russian Orthodox saint of the type known as yurodivy or "holy fool for Christ".  He was born to serfs.  Originally an apprentice shoemaker in Moscow, he adopted an eccentric lifestyle of shoplifting and giving to the poor to shame the miserly and help those in need.  He went naked and weighed himself down with chains.  He rebuked Ivan the Terrible for not paying attention in church, and for his violent behavior towards the innocent.  When he died, Ivan the Terrible himself acted as pallbearer and carried his coffin to the cemetery.  He is buried in St. Basil's Cathedral in Moscow, which was commissioned by Ivan and is named after the saint.

 Saint Basil's Cathedral - The Cathedral of the Protection of Most Holy Theotokos on the Moat or Pokrovsky Cathedral are official names for a Russian Orthodox church in Red Square in Moscow.  The church is also called the Cathedral of St. Vasily the Blessed, anglicized as Saint Basil's Cathedral.  It was built from 1555–61 on orders from Ivan the Terrible and commemorates the capture of Kazan and Astrakhan.

1554 May 29, Pope Julius III -After an appeal by Jews in Catholic countries, the Pope agreed only to allow the burning of the Talmud, but not "harmless rabbinical writings".

Pope Paul IV, C.R. (6/28, 1476 – 8/18, 1559), né Giovanni Pietro Carafa, was Pope from May 23, 1555 until his death.

1555.   Hananel di Foligno, of Rome, Jewish convert to Christianity, accused the Jews before Pope Marcellus II of the Ritual Murder of a boy. Enquiry under the auspices of a Cardinal resulted in a Mahomedan apostate, guardian of the murdered boy, being charged with the crucifixion of his ward "for the sake of getting possession of some property." This sounds like the usual cock-and-bull story which, under the powerful influence of Jew Money, is resorted to when Courts are faced with the difficult job of shielding Jews from "the Blood Accusation." Why on earth should the man crucify the boy instead of quietly getting rid of him in a more usual manner? Authority: Jewish Encyclopædia (1903), Vol. V, p. 423.

In 1555, Pope Paul IV reiterated these restrictions against the Jews and added some new ones.  He ordered Jews to pay an annual amount for every synagogue, "even those that have been demolished," and said: "Jews can only engage themselves in the work of street sweepers and rag pickers, and cannot be produce merchants or in things necessary for human use."  For contravening these regulations Jews are to be punished "as rebels and criminals (high treason), held as outlaws by all Christian people, by the judgment of our Vicars, Deputies and Magistrates…."

PAUL IV. Cum nimis absurdim (1555) promulgated immediately after his coronation, was a powerful condemnation of Jewish usury. It embodies a model legal code to curb Jewish power that was recommended to all communities.  He renewed all previous anti-Jewish legislation and installed a ghetto in Rome.  Jews were forced to wear a special cap and forbidden to own real estate or practice medicine on Christians.  Communities weren't allowed to have more than one synagogue and Jews in all the Papal States were forced to lock themselves into the confines of the ghettos each night.

1557 BOLIVIA -Jews were among the first settlers of Santa Cruz de la Sierra.  Although little is known of them, to this day many of the older families still light candles on Friday night and sit on the floor as a sign of mourning.

1558 September 22, RECANATI (Italy) -Under the protection of Pope Paul IV, Joseph (Paul) Moro, a baptized Jew, entered a synagogue on the Day of Atonement.  Holding a crucifix, he tried to preach a conversion sermon.  The congregation evicted him and a near massacre occurred.  Eventually the entire Jewish population was expelled.

1559 Pope Paul IV -Published the first Index of Forbidden Books which would lead to burning of the Talmud as well as any other books deemed offensive to Catholic faith or morals.

1559 March 29, PRZEMYSL (Poland) -King Sigismund II granted the Jews a charter despite opposition from the local authorities.

1559 April 17, CREMONA (Italy) -Sixtus Senesis, an apostate Jew who became a Dominican, tried to convince the local Spanish governor to burn the Talmud. The governor demanded witnesses before he would give the order.  Vitttorio Eliano, the converted grandson of Elias Levita and one Joshua dei Cantori, bore witness that the Talmud was full of lies about Christianity.  A few days later approximately 10,000 books were burned. The Zohar was not touched since the Pope and the Catholic Church was interested in its publication, believing that it would supplant the Talmud and make it easier to convert the Jews.  Ironically, it was Eliano himself who wrote the preface to the Cremona Zohar.

   Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni (3/6 1475 – 2/18 1564), was an Italian Renaissance sculptor, painter, architect, poet, and engineer who exerted an unparalleled influence on the development of Western art.   A number of his works in painting, sculpture, and architecture rank among the most famous in existence.  Despite his low opinion of painting, Michelangelo also created two of the most influential works in fresco in the history of Western art: the scenes from Genesis on the ceiling and The Last Judgment on the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel in Rome.  The Moses (c. 1513–1515) is a sculpture by Michelangelo.  It depicts the Biblical figure Moses with horns on his head, based on a mistranslation of the original Greek text: "Moses knew not that the appearance of the skin of his face was glorified (horned)."  This led to the widespread notion that Jews had devilish horns.

A Pieta is any representation of the Virgin Mary mourning over the dead body of Jesus.  Compassion, mercy, piety, and pity are English equivalents of 'pieta'.  The Pietà (1498–1499) is a masterpiece of Renaissance sculpture by Michelangelo Buonarroti,

****Chapters and Verses: There were earlier separations of Scriptures to be more readable, but the modern divisions were by Stephen Langton, who divided the Bible into chapters in the year A.D. 1227.  Langton was a professor at the University of Paris and later he became the Archbishop of Canterbury.  Robert Stephanus (Stephens), a French printer, divided the verses for his Greek New Testament. It was published in 1551.  The first entire Bible in which these chapter and verse divisions were used was Stephen's edition of the Latin Vulgate (1555).  The first English New Testament to have both chapter and verse divisions was the Geneva Bible (1560).  Fortunately Jewish scholars have followed the way of dividing the Hebrew Scripture into chapters and verses.

1560 - The Geneva Bible is one of the most historically significant translations of the Bible in the English language, preceding the King James translation by 51 years.  It was the primary Bible of the 16th Century Protestant movement and was the Bible used by William Shakespeare, Oliver Cromwell, John Milton, John Knox, John Donne, and John Bunyan, author of Pilgrim's Progress.  It was one of the Bibles taken to America on the Mayflower, it was used by many English Dissenters, and it was still respected by Oliver Cromwell's soldiers at the time of the English Civil War.   It continued to be used widely as Lincoln used the Geneva Bible.

  Legend of the Jew calling the Devil from a Vessel of Blood, Woodcut 1560

 :The Medieval Conception of the Jew…

1560 GOA -Portugal, which ruled Goa, established an inquisition which was to last (with one four year break) for almost 250 years.

Pope Pius IV (3/31, 1499 – 12/9, 1565), born Giovanni Angelo Medici (Jew?), was Pope from 1559 to 1565.  He is notable for presiding over the culmination of the Council of Trent.  He condemned Jewish genocidal writings. 

1561 Emperor Ferdinand I (Holy Roman Empire} -Took an oath to expel the Jews from Prague.  They were saved by Mordechai Zemach, who hurried to Rome and convinced Pope Pius IV to release the Emperor from his oath.  While he was gone, many Jews were forced to leave or were attacked by robber barons.

1545-1563 Council of Trent, 19th Catholic Council -Pope Paul III on December 13, 1545 spanned eighteen years under five popes - Pope Julius III, Marcellus II, Paul IV and Pope Pius IV.  The Council issued the most dogmatic and reformatory decrees ever, specifically on the Holy Eucharist, the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and the Sacraments plus reinstating traditions always held 'Catholic.'  Trent was the Counter-Reformation to the Protestant Reformation where Protestantism was condemned as anathema.  As a result, Pope Pius IV issued the Tridentine Creed in 1565; and Pope Pius V issued in 1566 the Roman Catechism, in 1568 a revised Roman Breviary, and in 1570 a revised Roman Missal, thus standardizing what since the 20th century has been called the Tridentine Mass (from the city's Latin name Tridentum), and Pope Clement VIII issued in 1592 a revised edition of the Vulgate.  Trent established the Sacraments.

The Sacraments of the Catholic Church are, the Roman Catholic Church teaches, "efficacious signs of grace, instituted by Christ and entrusted to the Church, by which divine life is dispensed to us.  The visible rites by which the sacraments are celebrated signify and make present the graces proper to each sacrament.  They bear fruit in those who receive them with the required dispositions." The Catechism of the Catholic Church lists the sacraments as follows: "The whole liturgical life of the Church revolves around the Eucharistic sacrifice and the sacraments.  There are seven sacraments in the Church: Baptism, Confirmation, Eucharist, Penance, Anointing of the Sick, Holy Orders, and Matrimony."

1564 March 24, Pope Pius IV -Permitted the publication of the Talmud - after censorship and the deletion of the name "Talmud".

 Saint Peter's Basilica, is a Late Renaissance church located within Vatican City.  Saint Peter's Basilica has the largest interior of any Christian church in the world.  While it is neither the mother church of the Roman Catholic Church nor the cathedral of the Bishop of Rome, Saint Peter's is regarded as one of the holiest Catholic sites.  It has been described as "holding a unique position in the Christian world" and as "the greatest of all churches of Christendom".  In Roman Catholic tradition, the basilica is the burial site of its namesake Saint Peter, who according to tradition, was the first Bishop of Rome and therefore first in the line of the papal succession.  Tradition and some historical evidence hold that Saint Peter's tomb is directly below the altar of the basilica.  For this reason, many Popes have been interred at St Peter's since the Early Christian period.  There has been a church on this site since the 4th century.  Construction of the present basilica, over the old Constantinian basilica, began on April 18, 1506 and was completed on November 18, 1626.  St Peter's is famous as a place of pilgrimage, for its liturgical functions and for its historical associations.  It is associated with the papacy, with the Counter-reformation and with numerous artists, most significantly Michelangelo.  As a work of architecture, it is regarded as the greatest building of its age.  Saint Peter's is one of the four churches of Rome that hold the rank of Major Basilica.  Contrary to popular misconception, it is not a cathedral as it is not the seat of a bishop; the cathedra of the Bishop of Rome is located in the Archbasilica of St. John Lateran.

The Counter-Reformation (also Catholic Reformation or Catholic Revival) denotes the period of Catholic revival beginning with the Council of Trent (1545–1563) and ending at the close of the Thirty Years' War, 1648.

 ****The Japanese code of the Samurai or Bushido code is typified by seven virtues:  Rectitude;  Courage;  Benevolence;  Respect;  Honesty;  Honor;  Loyalty.  Associated virtues: Filial piety;  Wisdom;  Care for the aged.  Christianity in the form of the Nestorians came 1000 years earlier and made an impact on the culture of Japan. 

 Samurai

Within a decade of the introduction of firearms to Japan in 1543, the Japanese were arguably the best gun makers in the world, and there were more guns per capita in Japan than in any other country in the world.  The warrior code of the Samurai, however, viewed the use of guns in warfare as dishonorable.  Centuries of tradition demanded that Samurai warriors engage in elaborate rituals prior to combat, which was conducted man-to-man and hand-to-hand between gentleman warriors.  Under pressure from the Samurai, the Emperor of Japan gradually reduced the number of authorized gun factories to zero and, over time, subsequently reduced the number of gun repair shops to zero.  By the time that Commodore Perry visited in the 1840s, there was not a single gun left in Japan, which left the Japanese at a decided disadvantage against the superior weaponry of the Europeans.  

1566 - 1574 Reign of Selim II "The Magnificent" (Ottoman Empire) -Selim had been supported by the Jews in his claim to the throne.  As a result, many Jews received important positions in his government, including Don Joseph Nasi who was appointed Duke of Naxos.  Selim II also allowed Marranos fleeing Portugal to settle in Turkey.

Don Joseph Nasi (1524, Portugal–1579, Constantinople) was a Jewish diplomat and administrator, and influential figure in the Ottoman Empire during the rules of both Sultan Suleiman I and his son Selim II.  He was a great benefactor of the Jewish people.  A Court Jew, he was appointed the Lord of Tiberias, with the expressed aim of resettling Jews in Palestine and encouraging industry.  Nasi also brought about war with the Republic of Venice, at the end of which Venice lost the island of Cyprus to the Ottomans. Nasi was born in Spain as a Marrano (practicing Judaism in secret), and was a friend of Maximilian, nephew of the Habsburg King Charles I of Spain.   He escaped to Portugal after Charles decided to confiscate the Mendes fortune, and, after the Holy Inquisition began operating against Portuguese Marranos, moved to Antwerp, in the Habsburg Netherlands.  At the Inquisition in 1547, he moved to France and later to Venice, before finally leaving for the Ottoman realm in 1554.  Due to his trading connections in Europe, he was able to exercise great influence on Ottoman foreign policy.  Among his achievements were negotiating peace with Poland, and influencing the new election of the Polish king.  He was awarded the monopoly of the beeswax trade with Poland, and of the wine trade with Moldavia, and maneuvered in the latter country to keep princes favorable to his policies in power.  Maintaining contacts with William the Silent, Nasi encouraged the Netherlands to revolt against Spain, a major adversary of the Ottoman Empire.  Nasi was the first person to attempt to settle Jews in the cities of Palestine by practical means, as opposed to waiting for the Messiah.

Solomon Abenaes (1520 Spain-1603 Turkey) was a diplomat.  After training as a goldsmith, in 1545 his parents sent him to exploit the Madras, India diamond mines.  In 1555, he received knighthood from Portugal.  In Turkey, he resumed Judaism.  Like Nasi, he became the lord of Tiberias.  Like Nasi, he maintained a wide network of informants throughout Europe and was a great benefit for the Turkish government.  He is regarded as a driving force in the establishment of the Anglo-Turkish alliance against Philip II of Spain.  Abenaes was the first to bring the news of the defeat of the Spanish Armada (1588) to the Turkish court.

 Nostradamus (Michel de Nostredame) (12/14 or 21, 1503 – 7/2, 1566), was a French Jew apothecary and reputed seer who published collections of prophecies that have since become famous worldwide.  Most academic sources maintain that the associations made between world events and Nostradamus's quatrains are largely the result of misinterpretations or mistranslations (sometimes deliberate) or else are so tenuous as to render them useless as evidence of any genuine predictive power.  Nostradamus' grandfather was Jewish, though converting to Catholicism; Nostradamus was looked upon with suspicion.  However, by packaging himself as a diviner and prophet he was able to curry favor with the king and avoid discrimination.

1566 VILNA (Lithuania) -The Bishop of Vilna "alarmed" at the rate of intermarriage convinced the King (Sigismund II) to ban the wearing of luxurious clothes, gold jewelry or carry a decorative sword. Instead Jews had to wear special clothes which would differentiate them from the Christians, including yellow hats and head coverings.

Saint Pope Pius V (1/17, 1504 – 5/1, 1572), born Antonio Ghislieri (from 1518 called Michele Ghislieri, O.P.), was Pope from 1566 to 1572 and is a saint of the Catholic Church.  He is chiefly notable for his role in the Council of Trent, the Counter-Reformation, and the standardization of the liturgy.  Hebraeorum gens (1569) expelled all Jews from the Papal States.

1566 April 19, Pope Pius V (The Papal States, Italy) -Three months into his reign, he rejected the leniencies of his predecessor and re-invoked all the restrictions of Paul IV.  These included Jews being forced to wear a special cap as well as the prohibitions against owning real estate and practicing medicine on Christians.  Communities were not allowed to have more than one synagogue and Jews were confined to a cramped ghetto.

Pierre Boaistuau, ( Pierre Launay) (c.1517- 1566) was a French humanist.  In his “Prodigious Histories”, he delves into some of the more forbidding areas of the Jewish question, concentrating on accusations that Jews murdered Christian children in France.

In 1567, Pope Pius V revoked the small concession, granted to Jews by Pius IV, enabling them to possess immovable property up to the value of 1,500 gold ducats.  He ordered the Jews to sell all their properties to Christians.  Two years later he ordered all Jews expelled from the States of the Church:  "By authority of these present Letters, We order that each and every Jew of both sexes in Our Temporal Dominions, and in all the cities, lands, places and baronies subject to them, shall depart completely out of the confines thereof within the space of three months after the present Letters shall have been made public. They shall be despoiled of all their goods, and be prosecuted according to the due process of law. They shall become bondsmen of the Roman Church, and shall be subjected to perpetual servitude. And the said Church shall claim the same right over them as other dominions over their slaves and bondsmen."

****Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth:

1569 BREST (Lithuania) -The union of the kingdoms of Poland and Lithuania opened the door for Jewish settlement in the Ukraine, which became one of the main centers of Lithuanian Jewry.  Up to this date there were no more than 4000 Jews in the area.  During the next 80 years the Jewish population increased to more than 50,000.  Against the backdrop of a fear of Russian intentions under Ivan IV, the Duchy of Lithuania and the kingdom of Poland decided on a practical merging.  Although they were now ostensibly "one common country", Lithuania still kept its own title, army, treasury, and code of law.  Jews helped found new towns and villages on the border between the two countries. The less then total union resulted in Lithuania retaining its own independent Jewish council that was not connected to the Council of the (four) Lands in Poland.

Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth (1569–1795) Poland and Lithuania underwent an alternating series of wars and alliances during the 14th century and early 15th century.  Several relatively weak agreements between the two (the Union of Kraków and Vilna, the Union of Krewo, the Union of Vilnius and Radom, the Union of Grodno, and the Union of Horodło) were struck before the permanent 1569 Union of Lublin.  This agreement was one of the signal achievements of Sigismund II Augustus, last monarch of the Jagiellon dynasty.  Sigismund believed he could preserve his dynasty by adopting elective monarchy.  His death in 1572 was followed by a three-year interregnum during which adjustments were made to the constitutional system; these adjustments significantly increased the power of the Polish nobility and established a truly elective monarchy.  The Commonwealth reached its Golden Age in the early 17th century.  Its powerful parliament was dominated by nobles who were reluctant to get involved in the Thirty Years' War; this neutrality spared the country from the ravages of a political-religious conflict which devastated most of contemporary Europe.  The Commonwealth was able to hold its own against Sweden, Tsardom of Russia, and vassals of the Ottoman Empire, and even launched successful expansionist offensives against its neighbors.  In several invasions during the Time of Troubles Commonwealth troops entered Russia and managed to take Moscow and hold it from 9/27, 1610 -11/4, 1612, until driven out after a siege.  Its growing weakness led to its partitioning among its more powerful neighbors, Austria, Prussia and the Russian Empire, during the late 18th century.  Shortly before its demise, the Commonwealth adopted a massive reform effort and enacted the Constitution of May 3, 1791 - the first written constitution in modern European history and the second in modern world history.

Commonwealth power began waning after a series of blows during the following decades.  A major rebellion of Cossacks in the southeastern portion of the Commonwealth (the Khmelnytskyi Uprising in modern-day Ukraine) began in 1648.  It resulted in a Ukrainian request, under the terms of the Treaty of Pereyaslav, for protection by the Muscovian Tsar.  Muscovian annexation of part of Ukraine gradually supplanted Polish influence.  The other blow to the Commonwealth was a Swedish invasion in 1655.  Supported by troops of Transylvanian duke George II Rákóczi and Frederick William, Elector of Brandenburg, The Deluge was the Swedish royal response to years of Commonwealth belligerence.

In the late 17th century, the weakened Commonwealth's King John III Sobieski allied himself with Leopold I to deal crushing defeats to the Ottoman Empire.  In 1683, the Battle of Vienna marked the final turning point in a 250-year struggle between the forces of Christian Europe and the Islamic Ottoman Empire.  For its centuries-long stance against the Muslim advances, the Commonwealth would gain the name of Antemurale Christianitatis (bulwark of Christianity).  During the next 16 years the Great Turkish War would drive the Turks permanently south of the Danube River, never to threaten central Europe again.

When Poland merged with the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in 1569, the expansion to the east offered new opportunities for both Polish lords and, along with them, Jews.  Jews began moving eastward in larger numbers and started assuming new functions as administrators of nobles’ estates.  The Jews’ status was that of free subjects, who had freedom of movement, the right to bear arms and to participate in defending the towns in which they lived, and the right to own real estate.  They had full autonomy but were subject to royal courts in lawsuits involving both Jews and Christians.  As a result of these conditions, Jews were able to become quite prominent in the royal economy of Poland, not only as bankers and merchants, as the various charters suggest, but also as tax and toll collectors, as highly positioned administrators, and even as lessees of royal salt mines, on which the crown had a monopoly.  Some Jews, such as members of the Ezofowicz family in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, became high-profile royal officials.  Scattered evidence suggests that their status allowed them to sue nobles.  A document in from Masovia suggests that for a brief period Jews were subject to jus nobilium, that is, to the laws of nobility.  Moreover, in the early period of their presence in Poland, Jews, like nobles, were required to supply riders in the event of war.  At least for a while, then, Polish monarchs accorded Jews a status similar to that of the nobility.

 1571 - The Battle of Lepanto took place on October 7, 1571 when a galley fleet of the Holy League, a coalition of Spain (including its territories of Naples, Sicily and Sardinia), the Republic of Venice, the Papacy (under Pope St. Pius V), the Republic of Genoa, the Duchy of Savoy, the Knights Hospitaller and others, decisively defeated the main fleet of Ottoman war galleys.  This was a battle to stem Muslim influence into Europe.

Joseph ben Joshua ben Meïr ha-Kohen (12/20, 1496 France - 1575 Italy) was a historian and physician.  In Hebrew literature, Joseph ha-Kohen achieved prominence by two historical works, the (Chronicles of the Kings of France and Turkey) and the Jewish Annals. 

Piotr Skarga (real name Piotr Powęski; 1536–1612) was a Polish Jesuit, preacher, hagiographer, polemicist, and leading figure of the Counter-reformation in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. His (Lives of the Saints,1579) has always been one of the favorite religious writings of Polish Catholics.  Skarga included in the book an account of the ritual murder of Simon of Trent; and he served as prosecutor in a trial of a Jew for black magic which made use of a consecrated communion wafer.

John Lyly (Lilly or Lylie) (c.1553 or 1554 – November 1606) was an English writer, best known for his books Euphues (1580), The Anatomy of Wit and Euphues and His England.  His famous Euphues uses Jews as a stock symbol of what an accomplished, humane person should not be.

Raphael Holinshed (1529–1580) was an English chronicler, whose work, commonly known as Holinshed's Chronicles, was one of the major sources used by William Shakespeare for a number of his plays.  “Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland” was a classic drawn on liberally by Shakespeare and other great writers.  Holinshed remarks that the entry of the Jews into England "was one of the grievances which England sustained by the hard dealings of the Conqueror."

Torquato Tasso (3/11, 1544 – 4/25, 1595) was an Italian poet of the 16th century, best known for his poem Gerusalemme Liberata (Jerusalem Delivered, 1580), in which he depicts a highly imaginative version of the combats between Christians and Muslims at the end of the First Crusade, during the siege of Jerusalem. Until the beginning of the 19th century, Tasso remained one of the most widely read poets in Europe.  The story’s hero was Godfrey of Bouillon, the leader of the first Crusade; the climax of the epic was the capture of the holy city.  The action of the epic turns on Armida, the beautiful witch, sent forth by the infernal senate to sow discord in the Christian camp.  She is converted to the true faith by her adoration for a crusading knight, and quits the scene with a phrase of the Virgin Mary on her lips.  Brave Clorinda dons armor like Marfisa, fighting in a duel with her devoted lover and receiving baptism from his hands at the time of her pathetic death; Erminia seeks refuge in the shepherds' hut.  These lovely pagan women, so touching in their sorrows, so romantic in their adventures, so tender in their emotions, rivet the readers' attention, while the battles, religious ceremonies, conclaves and stratagems of the campaign are easily skipped.  Tasso's great invention as an artist was the poetry of sentiment concordant with a growing feeling for woman and with the ascendant art of music.  This sentiment, refined, noble, natural, steeped in melancholy, exquisitely graceful, pathetically touching, breathes throughout the Gerusalemme and sustains the ideal life of those heroines whose names were familiar as household words to all Europe in the next two centuries.

 Saint Teresa of Ávila, also called Saint Teresa of Jesus (3/28, 1515 – 10/4, 1582) was a prominent Spanish mystic, Roman Catholic saint, Carmelite nun, and writer of the Counter Reformation, and theologian of contemplative life through mental prayer.  She was a reformer of the Carmelite Order and is considered to be, along with John of the Cross, a founder of the Discalced Carmelites.  Her paternal grandfather was a marrano (Jewish forced-convert to Christianity) and was condemned by the Spanish Inquisition for allegedly returning to the Jewish faith.  Her father, Alonso Sánchez de Cepeda, bought knighthood and successfully assimilated into Christian society. Teresa's mother, Beatriz, was especially keen to raise her daughter as a pious Christian.  Teresa was fascinated by accounts of the lives of the saints, and ran away from home at age seven with her brother Rodrigo to find martyrdom among the Moors. Her uncle stopped them as he was returning to the city, having spotted the two outside the city walls.

Jean Bodin (1530–1596), born in Angers, was a French jurist and political philosopher, member of the Parlement of Paris and professor of law in Toulouse.  He is best known for his theory of sovereignty (Divine Right of Kings).  Bodin lived during the Reformation, writing against the background of religious and civil conflict - particularly that, in his native France, between the (Calvinist) Huguenots and the state-supported Catholic Church.  He remained a Catholic throughout his life but was critical of papal authority and was sometimes accused of crypto-Calvinism. Towards the end of his life he wrote a dialogue between different religions, including representatives of Judaism, Islam and natural theology, in which all agreed to coexist in concord.

Pope Gregory XIII (1/7, 1502 – 4/10, 1585), born Ugo Boncompagni, was Pope from 1572 to 1585.  He declared that Jews "continue to plot horrible crimes" against Christians "with daily increasing audacity."

1581 March 30, Pope Gregory XIII -Issued a Bull banning the use of Jewish doctors. This did not prevent many popes from using Jews as their personal physicians.

Michel Eyquem de Montaigne (2/28, 1533 – 9/13, 1592) was a French Renaissance writer, known for popularizing the essay as a literary genre and is popularly thought of as the father of Modern Skepticism.  His mother was a Jew and the whole family turned Protestant.  There is no doubt that he went out of his way to visit synagogues, attend Jewish ceremonies, and converse with Jews. Montaigne gives a detailed, accurate and sympathetic account of Sabbath services and a circumcision ceremony.  He comments on the communal participation in prayer, study, and discussion, and on the widespread knowledge of Hebrew, even among children.  On February 6, 1581, he witnessed a pre-Lent "entertainment": burlesque races on the Corso, in which half-naked Jews had to take part.  He also attended a conversion sermon, given by a famous preacher, himself a converted Jew, who used his Talmudic knowledge to convince his brethren to convert.

 John Foxe (1517 – April 18, 1587) was an English martyrologist, the author of what is popularly known as “Foxe's Book of Martyrs”, an account of Christian martyrs throughout Western history.  Foxe claimed that God had turned away from the Jews.  Commenting upon the accusation that Jews kill Christian children, he wrote: “In general it was their custom every year to snatch away a Christian boy from his parents and crucify him on Good Friday, in despite of our religion. (Acts and Monuments of the Church)(1563) He describes the ritual crucifixion of British children by Jews at Norwich and Lincoln, before the expulsion.

Christopher Marlowe (c.2/26, 1564 – 5/30, 1593) was an English dramatist, poet and translator of the Elizabethan era.  As the foremost Elizabethan tragedian, next to William Shakespeare, he is known for his blank verse, his overreaching protagonists, and his mysterious death.  The Jew of Malta is a play by Christopher Marlowe, probably written in 1589 or 1590. Its plot is an original story of religious conflict, intrigue, and revenge, set against a backdrop of the struggle for between Spain and the Ottoman Empire in the Mediterranean that takes place on the island of Malta.  The Jew of Malta is considered to have been a major influence on William Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice.  The Jew Barabas hates Christians so much that he walks abroad at night poisoning wells and when his own daughter converts and becomes a nun, he poisons her too, along with her whole convent.  The Jew ends burned in a cauldron.  “As for myself, I walk abroad a'nights And kill sick people groaning under walls; Sometimes I go about and poison wells; And now and then, to cherish Christian thieves, I am content to lose some of my crowns, That I may, walking in my gallery, See 'em go pinion'd along by my door.  Being young, I studied physic and began To practice first upon the Italian; There I enrich'd the priests with burials, And always kept the sexton's arms in ure With digging graves and ringing dead men's knells.  After that I was an engineer, And in the wars 'twixt France and Germany, Under pretense of helping Charles the Fifth, Slew friend and enemy with my stratagems. Then after that I was an usurer, And with extorting, cozening, forfeiting, And tricks belonging unto brokery, I fill'd the jails with bankrouts in a year, And with young orphans planted hospitals, And every moon made some or other mad, And now and then one hang himself for grief, Pinning upon his breast a long great scroll, How I with interest tormented him.  But mark how I am bless'd for plaguing them: I have as much coin as will buy the town.  But tell me, now, how hast thou spent thy time? (The Jew of Malta, 2:3)

William I, Prince of Orange (4/24, 1533 – 7/10, 1584), (William the Silent), was the main leader of the Dutch revolt against the Spanish that set off the Eighty Years' War and resulted in the formal independence of the United Provinces in 1648.   He became Prince of Orange in 1544.  Declared an outlaw by the Spanish king in 1580, he was assassinated four years later.

 Sir Walter Raleigh (c1554 – 10/29, 1618) was an English aristocrat, writer, poet, soldier, courtier, spy, and explorer.  He is also well known for popularizing tobacco in England.  In 1584, Sir Walter Raleigh, a favorite of Queen Elizabeth I, received a royal patent to explore the Virginia territory and found a permanent settlement.  The queen hoped that the colonists would discover copper, silver and gold, or at least find a passageway to the Orient.  Sir Walter recruited Joachim Gaunse, a Bohemian (Czech) Jewish metallurgist and mining engineer, to join the Virginia expedition. Gaunse thus became the first recorded Jew to set foot on English soil in North America.  Raleigh's poetry is written in the relatively straightforward, unornamented mode known as the plain style.  C. S. Lewis considered Raleigh one of the era's "silver poets", a group of writers who resisted the Italian Renaissance influence of dense classical reference and elaborate poetic devices.  In poems such as "What is Our Life" and "The Lie", Raleigh expresses a contemptus mundi (contempt of the world) attitude more characteristic of the Middle Ages than of the dawning era of humanistic optimism.

 The Jew's harp, jaw harp, mouth harp, Ozark harp, trump or juice harp, is a lamellophone instrument, which is in the category of plucked idiophones: it consists of a flexible metal or bamboo tongue or reed attached to a frame.  The tongue/reed is placed in the performer's mouth and plucked with the finger to produce a note.  This instrument is thought to be one of the oldest musical instruments in the world; it can be seen in a Chinese drawing from the 4th century BC. It is used in all tribes of Turkic peoples in Asia.  The Jew's harp has been associated with magic and has been a common instrument in shamanic rituals.  The use of name Jew's harp appears earliest in Walter Raleigh's Discouerie Guiana in 1596, spelled "Iewes Harp”.  It has also been suggested that the name derives from the French "Jeu-trompe" meaning "toy-trumpet".  Some uses are found in South India, the Philippine archipelago, and as Turkic traditional music.

1588 The Spanish Armada was the fleet that sailed against England with the intention to stop English involvement in the Spanish Netherlands and English privateering in the Atlantic.  The fleet's mission was to transport an army across the Channel to England.  The mission eventually failed due to early English attacks on the Armada and bad weather.  The campaign formed part of a nearly twenty-year-long Anglo-Spanish War.  This was also to stop the spread of Protestantism.

Thomas Nashe (Nov 1567 – c. 1601) was an English Elizabethan pamphleteer, playwright, poet and satirist.  He wrote “Christ's Tears Over Jerusalem” in 1593:  “Let us leave off the proverb which we use to a cruel dealer, saying 'Go thy ways, thou art a Jew,' and say, 'Go thy ways, thou art a Londoner.'  For than Londoners are none more hard-hearted and cruel.  Is it not a common proverb among us, when any man hath cozened or gone beyond us, to say, 'He hath played the merchant with us'?  But merchants they turn it another way and say, 'He hath played the gentleman with them.'  The snake eateth the toad, the toad the snake.  The merchant eats up the gentleman, the gentleman eats up the yeoman, and all three do nothing but exclaim one upon another.”  In the same book, Nashe's Jesus, overcome with personal failure, laments his replacement by the Romans, who punish the people of Jerusalem.   Miriam, the Jewish woman who kills and eats her son in response to the famine racking Jerusalem, then defends her cannibalism at some length.  Nashe displays a penchant for the horrific and gory.  Every motion is a violent one; every street or river is clotted with blood and corpses.

  ****  Jewish Occultism & British Empire:   

 Elizabeth I (9/7, 1533 – 3/24, 1603) was Queen regnant of England and Queen regnant of Ireland from November 17, 1558 until her death.   Elizabeth set out to rule by good counsel, and she depended heavily on a group of trusted advisers led by William Cecil, Baron Burghley.

John Dee (7/13, 1527 – 1608 or 1609) was a noted English mathematician, astronomer, astrologer, occultist, navigator, imperialist, and consultant to Queen Elizabeth I.  He devoted much of his life to the study of alchemy, divination, and Hermetic philosophy.  He appears to have coined (or at least introduced into print) the term "British Empire."  Dee's high status as a scholar also allowed him to play a role in Elizabethan politics.  In his lifetime Dee amassed the largest library in England and one of the largest in Europe.  John Dee was Francis Bacon's friend and mentor. 

William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley (sometimes spelled Burleigh), KG (9/13, 1521 – 8/4, 1598) was an English statesman, the chief advisor of Queen Elizabeth I for most of her reign, twice Secretary of State (1550–1553 and 1558–1572) and Lord High Treasurer from 1572.  He was the founder of the Cecil dynasty which has produced many politicians including two Prime Ministers.  His political machine founded the British Empire.

Francis Bacon (1561-1626) is widely (if mistakenly) credited as the founder of the Rosicrucian order of which later famous occultists such as Rene Descartes and Isaac Newton were members. 

Christian Rosenkreuz (English: Christian Rose Cross) is the legendary, perhaps allegorical, founder of the Rosicrucian Order (Order of the Rose Cross), presented in the three Manifestos published in the early 17th century.  According to legend, Christian Rosenkreuz discovered and learned Esoteric Wisdom on a pilgrimage to the Middle East among Turkish, Arab, and Persian sages, possibly Sufi or Zoroastrian masters, supposedly in the early 15th century (see section below on Symbolism) ; returned and founded the "Fraternity of the Rose Cross" with himself (Frater C.R.C.) as Head of the Order.  French King Philip Le Bel (the contemporary of King Edward who expelled the Jews from Britain) outlawed the Knights Templars in AD 1306, two French members of that Order went to Scotland in that year where they were offered protection by Robert the Bruce who founded (in 1306) the Scottish Order of the Rosy Crux. 

The significance of occult Jewish religious figures to the history and fortunes of the British empire is shown by the life of John Dee as well as by Rabbi Falk, the Baal Shem of London and perhaps the most powerful man in the British Empire during the reigns of King George II and III including the time of the American revolution and who was even denounced by other Jewish leaders as an occultist and follower of the seventeenth century Jewish false messiah Shabettai Tzvi.

Isaac D'Israeli (5/11, 1766 – 1/19, 1848) was a British writer, scholar and man of letters. He is best known for his essays, his associations with other men of letters, and for being the father of British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli.  Ben. D'Israeli promoted racist colonialism and the opium trade during the height of the empire's power.  In 1842, Isaac D'Israeli wrote a biography of John Dee entitled 'The Occult Philosopher' which reveals much detail of the controversial aspects of Dee's career.   Dee was very controversial during his own lifetime among other reasons for the fact that it was a public outrage for a notorious occultist to be made an Anglican priest. 

“To forge ties between Jewish merchants and British Imperialists, John Dee created the concept of British-Israel, which gave the British and the Jews a common racial identity, and invoked biblical prophecy to show the inevitable triumph of British Imperialism: the British, as Abraham's seed, were to inherit the earth.  Dee also introduced the Jewish Cabala to the British ruling class and its interlocking network of European royal dynasties. All this set the stage for the later absorption of European Jewish merchants and bankers into British society…  In essence, the dissemination of the British-Israel doctrine was an intelligence coup carried out by the British Monarchy.”

Literary Note from "British Empire of the Crown -- 500 Year Chronology": "Secret intellectual warfare between Catholic and Jewish-Cabalist influences surfaces.  Marlowe writes "Faust" to defame John Dee as a Satanic Magician, "The Jew of Malta" to enrage public opinion against the growing commercial alliance with Jewish Merchants and "Tamburlaine" to discredit Elizabethan British Empire ideals.  An Elizabethan court issued a warrant for Marlowe's arrest on an unexplained charge of 'blasphemy', He was released shortly before the trial was supposed to take place, and mysteriously murdered before trial.

 1590 The Faerie Queene is an incomplete English epic poem by Edmund Spenser.  A letter written by Spenser to Sir Walter Raleigh in 1589 contains a preface for The Faerie Queene, in which Spenser describes the allegorical presentation of virtues through Arthurian knights in the mythical "Faerieland."  Presented as a preface to the epic in most published editions, this letter outlines plans for 24 books: 12 based each on a different knight who exemplified one of 12 "private virtues", and a possible 12 more centered on King Arthur displaying twelve "public virtues". Spenser names Aristotle as his source for these virtues, although the influence of Thomas Aquinas can be observed as well.  As it was published in 1596, the epic presented the following virtues: Holiness, Temperance, Chastity, Friendship, Justice, Courtesy.  In addition to these six virtues, the Letter to Raleigh suggests that Arthur represents the virtue of Magnificence, which ("according to Aristotle and the rest") is "the perfection of all the rest, and conteineth in it them all"; and that the Faerie Queene herself represents Glory (hence her name, Gloriana).  The unfinished seventh book (the Cantos of Mutability), appears to have represented the virtue of "constancy."  He rides over the English countryside, getting into adventures, and rescuing Una, a damsel in distress, who symbolizes both Queen Elizabeth I and the Virgin Mary.  She travels with a lion (God’s law) and a lamb (God’s love).  She recruits him to save her family’s castle from a monstrous dragon (Satan), whom the Redcrosse knight defeats in combat after putting on the armor of God.  This duel, near the end of the first book, is one of the most famous events of the poem, and a classic tale of a knight slaying a dragon.  The protagonists come across various villains on their journey, such as Duessa, who represents the false Church, Archimago, a sorcerer who represents paganistic heresy, who hates Redcrosse and England, and King Arthur and Merlin.

Edmund Spenser (c. 1552 – 1/13, 1599) was an English poet best known for The Faerie Queene, an epic poem and fantastical allegory celebrating the Tudor dynasty and Elizabeth I.  He is recognized as one of the premier craftsmen of Modern English verse in its infancy, and one of the greatest poets in the English language.

Johann Fischart (c.1545 – 1591) was a German satirist and publicist.  His Wunderzeitung stressed the Jews' alleged proclivity to black magic and other monstrous behavior.

Jost Amman (6/13, 1539– 3/17, 1591) was a Swiss artist, celebrated chiefly for his woodcuts, done mainly for book illustrations.  About 1,500 prints are attributed to him.  He was a Christian artist showing the Jewish sterotypes.

 John of the Cross (6/24, 1542 – 12/14, 1591) was a major figure of the Counter-Reformation, a Spanish mystic, Catholic saint, Carmelite friar and priest.  Both his poetry and his studies on the growth of the soul are considered the summit of mystical Spanish literature and one of the peaks of all Spanish literature.

Pope Clement VIII (2/24 1536 – 3/3 1605), was Pope from 1/30 1592 to 3/3 1605.  Pope Clement said this in 1592: “All the world suffers from the usury of the Jews, their monopolies and deceit.  They have brought many unfortunate people into a state of poverty, especially the farmers, working class people and the very poor.  Then, as now, Jews have to be reminded intermittently that they were enjoying rights in any country since they left Palestine and the Arabian desert, and subsequently their ethical and moral doctrines as well as their deeds rightly deserve to be exposed to criticism in whatever country they happen to live.” 

1593 June 10, Leghorn, Livorno (Italy) - In an effort to turn the town into a successful port Ferdinand I (the Medici ruler), issued an open invitation for "Westerners, Spaniards" etc. to join in settling the town.  The charter guaranteed freedom of religion including the open practice (for Marranos) of Judaism and the right of citizenship.

Robert Greene (7/11 1558 – 9/3 1592) was an English author best known for a posthumous pamphlet attributed to him, “Greene's Groats-Worth of Wit”, widely believed to contain a polemic attack on William Shakespeare.  Greene published in many genres including autobiography, plays, and romances.  His play, “Selimus, Emperor of the Turks” (1594), examines an expert Jewish assassin usually interpreted as representing Roderigo Lopez, the Jewish doctor who was convicted of trying to kill Queen Elizabeth.  Excerpt: “Bejazet hath with him a cunning Iew Professing physicke; and so skill'd therein, As if he had pow'r o'er life and death, Withall a man so stout and resolute That he will venture anything for gold.  The Iew with some intoxicated drinke Shall poyson Bejazet...”

 The Seven Champions of Christendom is a moniker referring to St. George of England, St. Andrew of Scotland, St. Patrick of Ireland, St. Denis of France, St. James Boanerges of Spain, St. Anthony the Lesser of Portugal, and St. David of Wales.  The champion`s have been depicted in Christian art and folklore as heroic warriors, most notably in “Seven Champions of Christendom” (1596) by  Richard Johnson.  Richard Johnson (1573 – c. 1659) was a British romance writer. The success of “Seven Champions of Christendom”was so great that the author added a second and a third part in 1608 and 1616.

Thomas Kyd (11/~6, 1558 – 8/15, 1594) was an English dramatist, the author of The Spanish Tragedy, and one of the most important figures in the development of Elizabethan drama.  “The Spanish Tragedy”(1592) established a new genre, the revenge play or revenge tragedy.  Its plot contains several violent murders and includes as one of its characters a personification of Revenge.  The Spanish Tragedy was often referred to (or parodied) in works written by other Elizabethan playwrights, including William Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, and Christopher Marlowe.

 “Jewish Atrocities, Murders and Superstitions” (1598) by Father Przeslaw Mojecki is usually acknowledged as a classic of reportage of the Jewish situation in Poland.

Giordano Bruno (1548 – 2/17, 1600), born Filippo Bruno, was an Italian Dominican friar, philosopher, mathematician and astronomer.  “After a discussion of avarice, in which Mercury defends it, Sophia (wisdom) declares: It is true that I have never found such an opinion, except among savage barbarians; and I believe that it was first found among Jews, because they are such a pestilent, leprous and generally pernicious generation, who deserve to be extinguished before they are born.” (The Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast)

“During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries domestic commerce (in Poland and Lithuania) as well as export and import were for the most part in Jewish hands.”  “Forbidden to own land, but allowed to lease it, Jews often became leaseholders. T hus, on the vast lands of the Ostrorog family, for example, there were about 4000 Jewish leaseholders.”  In 1616, over half the crown lands in Ukraine were leased to Jewish entrepreneurs. Because they had to make good their investments in a relatively short period of two or three years, they exploited the properties and peasants mercilessly, without regard for future consequences.  It was not uncommon for a leaseholder to demand six or seven days of labour from the peasants and, with the help of the magnate's minions, to drive them into the fields…

In exchange for their services, Jewish merchants attempted to extract the highest possible profits. T o many non-Jews it appeared that they were not only excessive, but ill-gotten.  For example, after studying the economic relationship between Jews and Ukrainians in Transcarpathia, a Hungarian economist of Irish descent, Edmund Egan, reported to the government that while the administration, magistrates, and estate owners contributed to the woeful plight of the peasantry, the main fault lay with the Jews, who as moneylenders, merchants, and tavern-keepers, were... 'disposessing the Ruthenians of their money and their property.' 

Dumbshow is a traditional term for pantomime in drama, actions presented by actors onstage without spoken dialogue.  It is similar to the masque. The term is most often used in regard to medieval drama and English Renaissance theatre.  Shakespeare used this and it fell into disuse prior to 1660.

 Punch and Judy is a traditional, popular puppet show featuring the characters of Mr. Punch and his wife, Judy.  The show has roots in the 16th-century Italian commedia dell'arte.  Punch derives from character of the Lord of Misrule and Trickster figures of deep-rooted mythologies.  A Roman mime called Maccus was the original of Punch.  A statuette of this buffon was discovered in 1727, containing all the well-known features of our friend- the long nose and goggle eyes, the hunch back and protruding breast.  Punch could also reflect attitudes towards Jews.  Judy could be a derivative of Jew.  Kasperle is a traditional puppet character from Austria and Germany dated to the 17th century.  The older Kasperle shows are very similar to "Mister Punch".  Then there are "Kasperle Versions" of Brothers Grimm fairy tales, and "modern fairy tales."  The puppet Kasper, along with France's Guignol, and Britain's Punch and Judy has his origins in the character of Pulcinella, a stock character of the Italian Commedia dell'Arte. Pulcinella was a violent character typically dressed in white clothing, a long white hat, and a black mask.  The traditional Kasper and modern Punch use a slapstick to beat the crocodile, police, and even the Devil.  "Slapstick" originates from the baton made of wooden slats fastened together like a castanet.  On impact, the slapstick makes a loud slapping sound.  The term has become synonymous with physical comedy.

 16th century drawing of two Jews from Worms, each wearing the required yellow badge.

1600         1600         1600         1600

Century 1600 Preview: Philo-Judaism follows the Pilgrims and Puritans.  Philo-Judaic evangelists spread their teachings  across Europe.  The Government-produced King James Bible is produced to overthrow the Geneva Bible.  The Thirty Year War takes place for religious and political reasons.  Both sides borrow from the Jews and in return grant the Jewish communities more freedoms.  (It’s Freedom for the Jewish Golem.)  Jews begin to profit by Slavery, 90% of ships are Jewish.  Cromwell takes over England with Jewish money and further emancipates them.  The false Messiah, Sabbatai Zevi, misleads half of the European Jews.  Freemasonry begins in earnest, it is a Jewish Secret Society.  The Jew-owned Bank of England monopoly begins.  The City of London is the Jewish Financial Center of the World.

Societal Views about Jews:  Jews tribally isolate themselves, but continue to work together to monopolize at every opportunity.  Financial institutions are still primarily Jewish.  The upper classes borrow from the Jews and the common working man is exploited by the Jews.

  Jews seeking shelter from their pursuers at the altar.  (1600’s?) German

 The Greedy Jew (1600’s?)

 Jew as a cheat and moneychanger. (1600?)

Holy Roman Empire ~ 1600ad:

Thomas Nashe (November 1567 -c.1601) was an English Elizabethan pamphleteer, playwright, poet and satirist.  The Unfortunate Traveller (1594), one of the first English-language novels, has two Jews as its villains.  Zadoch and Zachary are shown as usurers, cannibals, human vivisectionists, assassins and assorted other monstrosities.

Samuel Friedrich Brenz was a Jewish convert to Christianity in 1601, and wrote (The Jewish Serpent's Skin Stripped), in which he bitterly attacked his former coreligionists, whom he accused of hating "the most pious and innocent Jew, Jesus Christ," in which he denounced their religious literature and in which revealed the Ritual Murder practices of the Jews.  The book was republished in 1680 and again in 1715.  The book was republished in 1680 and again in 1715.

Purim, the Jewish holiday of Revenge against Gentiles.

Leon Modena or Yehudah Aryeh Mi-modena (1571–1648) was a Jewish scholar born in Venice of a notable French family that had migrated to Italy after an expulsion of Jews from France.  In his Riti, he describes Purim as a carnival-like atmosphere of celebrations and convivial opulence in which restraint and inhibition were dangerously weakened.

  ****Jewish Banking:

In the early modern age, the courts of Europe were almost completely dependent upon private bankers for short term loans ... most of the money in those days... was in the hands of the Jewish dealers in gems and precious metals.  The identical circumstances that produced the merchant and purveyor produced the Jewish banker: his connection with the Netherlands, the banking center of Europe, through his Sephardic brethren, his international connections in all the mercantile centers of Europe; above all, his long experience in dealing with precious metals and the currencies of the continent…

The rise of powerful Jewish banking institutions began, especially in Germany and the Netherlands, in the seventeenth century.  Wealthy Jews became influential in Dutch imperialist activities overseas, many as shareholders in both the Dutch East and West India Companies.  About a quarter of both the Dutch East and West India companies were Jews; they also represented 37 of 41 members of the Amsterdam Stock Exchange in this era. 

The Dutch East India Company was a chartered company established in 1602, when the States-General of the Netherlands granted it a 21-year monopoly to carry out colonial activities in Asia.  Jews owned an estimated 25 percent of the Dutch East India Company, and enough of the Dutch West India Company to stave off Peter Stuyvesant's attempt to exile the first Jews to land in America.

A cuckoo clock is a clock, typically pendulum-regulated, that strikes the hours with a sound like a common cuckoo's call and typically has a mechanical cuckoo that emerges with each note. The mechanism to produce the cuckoo call was installed in almost every kind of cuckoo clock since the middle of the 18th century and has remained almost without variation until the present.  The design of a cuckoo clock is now conventional. Most are made in the "traditional style" (also known as "carved") or "chalet" to hang on a wall.  In the "traditional style" the wooden case is decorated with carved leaves and animals.  They have an automaton of the bird that appears through a small trap door while the clock is striking.  The bird is often made to move as the clock strikes, typically by means of an arm that lifts the back of the carving.  Since antiquity there have been timepieces with an automaton bird.  The first one is credited to the Greek mathematician, Ctesibius of Alexandria (ca.285-222 BC), who in the 2nd century BC "used water to sound a whistle and make a model owl move.  He had invented the world's first "cuckoo" clock".  In Europe during the Late Middle Ages and later, roosters were used to crow the hours in certain clocks, like the first astronomical clock in Strasbourg Cathedral.  In the 1600’s, people in the Black Forest started to build cuckoo clocks.  The "Chalet" style originated at the end of the 19th century in Switzerland, at that time they were highly valued as souvenirs.  Indeed, music and jewellery boxes of several sizes as well as timepieces were manufactured in the shape of a typical Swiss chalet, some of those clocks had also the added feature of a cuckoo bird and other automata.  Commonly found in the chalet style, is the incorporation of a Swiss music box, the most popular melodies are "The Happy Wanderer" and "Edelweiss" which sound alternately.  These are commonly thought of as folk songs but are actually both modern compositions, written around the Second World War.

In 1604, Father Prudencio de Sandoval wrote, “Who can deny that in the descendants of the Jews there persists and endures the evil inclination of their ancient ingratitude and lack of understanding. [One Jewish ancestor] alone defiles and corrupts him.”

John Marston (baptised 10/7 1576 -6/25 1634) was an English poet, playwright and satirist during the late Elizabethan and Jacobean periods.  His play, The Malcontent (1604), was based upon the attempt on the life of Queen Elizabeth by the Spanish Jew, Lopez.  In one speech, the Spaniard charged with procuring the crime asks: “Canst thou impoyson?  Canst thou impoyson?  Malevole: Excellently - no Jew, pothecary or politician better.  Marston's The Insatiate Countess and Every Woman in her Humour also have degenerate and criminal Jewish characters.

Pope Clement VIII (2/24, 1536 –3/3, 1605), born Ippolito Aldobrandini, was Pope from January 30, 1592 to March 3, 1605. - "All the world suffers from the usury of the Jews, their monopolies and deceit.  They have brought many unfortunate people into a state of poverty, especially the farmers, working class people and the very poor.  Then as now Jews have to be reminded intermittently anew that they were enjoying rights in any country since they left Palestine and the Arabian desert, and subsequently their ethical and moral doctrines as well as their deeds rightly deserve to be exposed to criticism in whatever country they happen to live."

Thomas Dekker (c.1572 – 8/25, 1632) was an English Elizabethan dramatist and pamphleteer, a versatile and prolific writer whose career spanned several decades and brought him into contact with many of the period's most famous dramatists.  “Newes From Hell” (1606) depicts a Jewish money-lender who cannot refrain from usury even after death.  “The Honest Whore” contains many obscene Jewish references, as do other of his plays.

  Guy Fawkes (4/13, 1570 – 1/31, 1606), belonged to a group of provincial English Catholics who planned the failed Gunpowder Plot of 1605.   The plotters secured the lease to an undercroft beneath the House of Lords, and Fawkes was placed in charge of the gunpowder they stockpiled there.  Prompted by the receipt of an anonymous letter, the authorities found Fawkes guarding the explosives.  Over the next few days, he was questioned and tortured, and eventually he broke.  Immediately before his execution on 31 January, Fawkes jumped from the scaffold where he was to be hanged and broke his neck, thus avoiding the agony of the mutilation that followed.  Fawkes became synonymous with the Gunpowder Plot, the failure of which has been commemorated in England since 5 November 1605.  His effigy is often burned on a bonfire, commonly accompanied by a firework display.   An Act of Parliament designated each November 5 as a day of thanksgiving for "the joyful day of deliverance", and remained in force until 1859.  Although he was only one of 13 conspirators, Fawkes is today the individual most associated with the failed Plot.  During the 19th century, "guy" came to mean an oddly dressed person, but in American English it lost any pejorative connotation, and was used to refer to any male person.  William Harrison Ainsworth's 1841 historical romance Guy Fawkes; or, The Gunpowder Treason, portrays Fawkes in a generally sympathetic light, and transformed him in the public perception into an "acceptable fictional character". Fawkes subsequently appeared as "essentially an action hero" in children's books and penny dreadfuls such as The Boyhood Days of Guy Fawkes; or, The Conspirators of Old London, published in about 1905.  Fawkes is sometimes referred to as "the only man ever to enter Parliament with honest intentions".

1608, E. F. Hess: ~"...On (the Jewish New Year) one Jew asks another, whether he no ... Christians deceived, or whether he had stolen, or indeed a move to which he stolen, and sold the stolen half the Jews with money, or if he does not Christians verfortheilt with the exchange or cheated.  In sum, because the other one opens inn was medium and routes he cheated one.  Then the other says: Ey wolan so hast thou Corban brought, that is, you've made a sacrifice God Hand ... "(tried to google translate)

Thomas Coryat (also Coryate) (c. 1577 – 1617) was an English traveler and writer of the late Elizabethan and early Jacobean age. He is principally remembered for two volumes of writings he left regarding his travels, often on foot, through Europe and parts of Asia. “Our English proverb: to look like a Jew, whereby is meant sometimes a weather-beaten, wasp-like fellow, sometimes a frenetic and lunatic person, sometimes one discontented.-Thomas Coryat, Crudities, 1611

****Korban is the term for offering whether for an animal or other offering.  There are even Talmudic rules to take money from one’s parents and to call it corban.

Francisco Suárez (1/5, 1548 – 9/25, 1617) was a Spanish Jesuit priest, philosopher and theologian, one of the leading figures of the School of Salamanca movement, and generally regarded among the greatest scholastics after Thomas Aquinas.  Suarez advocated the banning of the Talmud and the building of synagogues, as well as forbidding "any familiarity with Jews".

  ****The Chosen People – Usually within Christianity, this means that we are within Christ’s Kingdom and to be his messengers.  Within cultural Judaism and fundamentalist Christian views of Judaism this means that Jews are close to the heart of God.  “Treasured People” is the exact phrase used in the Bible, referring to the Hebrews/Israelites.  In the Book of Deuteronomy, YHWH proclaims the Nation of Israel, known originally as the Children of Israel, as his "treasured people out of all the people on the face of the earth" (Deuteronomy 7:6).  As mentioned in the Book of Exodus, the Hebrew people are God's chosen people, and from them shall come the Messiah, or redeemer of the world.  The Israelites also possess the "Word of God" and/or "Law of God" in the form of the Torah as communicated by God to Moses. 

****Proto Philo-Jewish Protestants distributing Jewish sympathies throughout Europe.  These are Christian missionaries of Jewish ‘Chosenness’.

Thomas Brightman (1562–1607) was an English clergyman and biblical commentator.  His exegesis of the Book of Revelation, published posthumously, proved influential.  Philo Jewish Protestant

Johann Heinrich Alsted (1588 - Nov 9th 1638) was a Reformed theologian, philosopher, educator and polymath.  Philo Jewish Protestant from Germany to Transylvania

John Amos Comenius (3/28, 1592 – 11/4, 1670) was a Czech teacher, educator, and writer.  He served as the last bishop of Unity of the Brethren, and became a religious refugee and one of the earliest champions of universal education, a concept eventually set forth in his book Didactica Magna.  He is often considered the father of modern education.  Philo Jewish Protestant from Moravia to Poland

Samuel Hartli(e)b (ca. 1600 – 1662) was a German-British polymath.  Philo Jewish Protestant from Poland to England

Paul Felgenhauer (11/16, 1593 - 1677) was an influential German controversialist and Chiliast the Baroque period.  Philo Jewish Protestant from Bohemia to Holland

Abraham von Franckenberg (6/24, 1593 – 6/25, 1652) was a German mystic, author, poet and hymn-writer.  Philo Jewish Protestant from Bavaria to Prussia.

The Protestant reemphasis on the Old Testament leads to philo-Judaism.  (How many Jews became crypto-Protestants?)  There is renewed interest in Palestine which peaks with the British victory over the Turkish Ottoman Empire in World War I and the foundation of the State of Israel.  This was to be the ‘Final Solution’.  There seems to be a theme in fundamentalist Protestantism which states “I don’t like Jews personally, but as a people they are Chosen.”

  Judah Loew ben Bezalel, alt. Loewe, Löwe, or Levai, (c. 1520 – 9/17, 1609) widely known to scholars of Judaism as the Maharal of Prague) was an important Talmudic scholar, Jewish mystic, and philosopher who served as a leading rabbi in the city of Prague in Bohemia for most of his life.   Within the world of Torah and Talmudic scholarship, he is known for his works on Jewish philosophy and Jewish mysticism and his work Gur Aryeh al HaTorah, a supercommentary on Rashi's Torah commentary.   The Maharal is particularly known for the legend that he created The Golem of Prague, an animate being fashioned from clay, using mystical powers based on the esoteric knowledge of how God created Adam.  This legend, which first appeared in print nearly 200 years after the Maharal's death, states he created the golem to defend the Jews of the Prague Ghetto from antisemitic attacks.

 ****The Golem - The history of the golem goes back in recorded history to the time of the Talmud, which mentions several instances of Rabbis creating a manlike creature and using him to conduct errands.  The most famous golem is the golem of Rabbi Yehuda Leow, the famous Maharal of Prague, who created a golem and after using him to prevent a blood libel, hid him in the attic of the famed synagogue of Prague.  A statue of the golem stands at the entrance to the former Jewish area in Prague.  In the early 20th century the golem was adopted by mainstream European and society including Gustav Meyrink's 1914 novel Der Golem through numerous American authors.  Golems also appear widely in the various editions of Dungeons and Dragons and in the Pokémon universe.

Joseph Justus Scaliger (8/5, 1540 – 1/21, 1609) was a French religious leader and scholar, known for expanding the notion of classical history from Greek and Ancient Roman history to include Persian, Babylonian, Jewish and Ancient Egyptian history.  Ramón Martí was a 13th century Catalan Dominican friar and theologian.  He is remembered for his polemic work Pugio Fidei (c. 1280) which was lost for a long time, but was finally brought to light by Justus Scaliger, and edited by Joseph de Voisin of the Sorbonne (d. 1685), with many notes, under the title Pugio Fidei Raymundi Martini Ordinis Prædicatorum Adversus Mauros et Judæos (Paris, 1651).  The work treats of God's omniscience, the Creation, immortality, and the resurrection of the dead, and attempts to show the falsity of the Jewish religion; the latter part of the work is valuable on account of its extracts from the Talmud, the Midrash, and other sources.

Benjamin "Ben" Jonson (6/11 1572 – 8/6 1637) was an English Renaissance dramatist, poet and actor.  A contemporary of William Shakespeare, he is best known for his satirical plays, particularly Volpone, The Alchemist, and Bartholomew Fair, which are considered his best, and his lyric poems.  A man of vast reading and a seemingly insatiable appetite for controversy, Jonson had an unparalleled breadth of influence on Jacobean and Caroline playwrights and poets.  His play The Alchemist (1610) has a low Jewish character that angers 'anti-Semitism' experts.

  Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (9/29, 1571 – 7/18, 1610) was an Italian artist active in Rome, Naples, Malta, and Sicily between 1593 and 1610.  His paintings, which combine a realistic observation of the human state, both physical and emotional, with a dramatic use of lighting, had a formative influence on the Baroque school of painting.   Caravaggio's novelty was a radical naturalism that combined close physical observation with a dramatic, even theatrical, use of chiaroscuro.  He burst upon the Rome art scene in 1600 with the Martyrdom of Saint Matthew and Calling of Saint Matthew.  Caravaggio's fame scarcely survived his death.  In the 1920s art critic Roberto Longhi brought Caravaggio's name once more to the foreground, and placed him in the European tradition.  The influential Bernard Berenson: "With the exception of Michelangelo, no other Italian painter exercised so great an influence."

 1611 -The Authorized King James Version is an English translation completed in 1611 by the Church of England.  This was the third such official translation into English; the first having been the Great Bible commissioned by the Church of England in the reign of King Henry VIII, and the second having been the Bishop's Bible of 1568.  King James was a homosexual and wanted a Scripture to reflect the divine right of Kings and his ecclestiastical order.  The Geneva Bible preceded the King James translation by 51 years. It was used by William Shakespeare, Oliver Cromwell, John Milton, John Knox, John Donne, and John Bunyan, author of Pilgrim's Progress.  It was used by the Pilgrims and Puritans and even, much later, by Abraham Lincoln.  The annotations which are an important part of the Geneva Bible were Calvinist and Puritan in character, and as such they were disliked by the ruling pro-government Protestants of the Church of England.  The Geneva notes were surprisingly included in a few editions of the King James Version, even as late as 1715.  The 1560 Geneva Bible contained a number of study aids, including woodcut illustrations, maps and explanatory 'tables', i.e. indexes of names and topics, in addition to the important marginal notes.  Each book was preceded by an 'argument' or introduction, and each chapter by a list of contents giving verse numbers.

Jewdom sits on the necks of the citizen and of the poor man, and is the cause of the rapidly increasing poverty.  These vultures do not desist until they have consumed the marrow in the bones and reduced the citizen to beggary.  - Petition of Frankfort citizens - June 10, 1612 (?)

In Poland the Jews collected rents and taxes, enforced seigniorial (aristocratic) rights, and controlled the economy.

Sir Thomas Overbury (baptized 1581 – 9/15 1613, murdered) was an English poet and essayist.  "A Devilish Usurer" is one of the episodes in his Characters.  The figure sketched is a Jew.

  El Greco (1541 – 4/7, 1614) was a painter, sculptor and architect of the Spanish Renaissance. "El Greco" (The Greek) was a nickname, a reference to his ethnic Greek and Orthodox origin.  With Byzantine affinities he had certainly been even more versed in Jewish deceit.  In this age El Greco painted his religion: Annunciations, the birth of Jesus, the Holy Family, Crucifixions, Resurrections, Ascensions, and literally hundreds of apostles and Christian saints. 

1614 August 24, FRANKFURT (Germany) -The Jews were allowed to leave but without any property. 1,380 Jews left.  Many Jews were given shelter in neighboring small communities.

1614, S. F. Brentz  ~”If the Jews herumbgelauffen one Gantze Mochen, and now here, now there, a Christian cheated, they commonly come together every Sabbath day and boast of their Knavery, so say the other Jews darauff, ... one should Christians the hertz from the Nemen body, and say further: ... the best among the Christians should be beaten dead." (tried to google translate)

Marie de Médicis (4/26 1575 – 7/4 1642), was queen consort of France, as the second wife of King Henry IV of France, of the House of Bourbon. She herself was a member of the wealthy and powerful House of Medici.  Following the assassination of her husband in 1610, which occurred the day after her coronation (Jewish intrigue?), she acted as regent for her son, King Louis XIII of France, until he came of age.  She was famed for her ceaseless political intrigues at the court of France and extensive artistic patronage.  She expelled the (competitor?) Jews in 1615 on the grounds that they were "sworn enemies of Christianity."

1615 April 20, WORMS (Germany) -Led by Dr. Chemnitz, the guilds "non-violently" forced the Jews from the city.

Justus Jonas von Wahrnrechtingen  In the book “Tricinium Cursum Francofordianum” (1616), he told the story of the Vincent Fettmilch 1612-1616 uprising from the side of the common folk who had joined in it.  'Official' historians continue, as always, to retail the Jewish version, which complains of yet another monstrous and totally unwarranted 'persecution.'

Thomas Middleton (4/18, 1580 – 1627) was an English Jacobean playwright and poet.  Middleton stands with John Fletcher and Ben Jonson as among the most successful and prolific of playwrights who wrote their best plays during the Jacobean period.  He was one of the few Renaissance dramatists to achieve equal success in comedy and tragedy.  Also a prolific writer of masques and pageants, he remains one of the most noteworthy and distinctive of Jacobean dramatists.  “The Roaring Girl” is a Jacobean stage play, a comedy written by Thomas Middleton and Thomas Dekker ca. 1607-10.  Thomas Dekker (c. 1572 – 8/25, 1632) was an English Elizabethan dramatist and pamphleteer, a versatile and prolific writer whose career spanned several decades and brought him into contact with many of the period's most famous dramatists.   A modern reviewer said that Dekker wrote the part: Curtilax: “As damned a usurer as ever was among Jews; if he were sure his father's skin would yield him any money, he would when he dies flay it off, and sell it to cover drums for children at Bartholomew Fair.”  Middleton in “A Trick to Catch the Old One”: Hoard: “Was it the part of a friend? No, rather of a Jew—mark what I say—when I had beaten the bush to the last bird, or, as I may term it, the price to a pound, then like a cunning usurer to come in the evening of the bargain, and glean all my hopes in a minute?  To enter, as it were, at the back door of the purchase? For thou never cam’st the right way by it.”

In 1616, over half the crown lands in Ukraine were leased to Jews who exploited the properties and drove the peasants mercilessly for profits.

 Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (9/29, 1547 – 4/23, 1616) was a Spanish novelist, poet, and playwright.  His magnum opus Don Quixote, considered the first modern novel.  He might have had Jewish blood.  Don Quixote is filled with Christian sentiment.  The musical "The Impossible Dream" from “Man of La Mancha” (1972):

“To dream the impossible dream To fight the unbeatable foe To bear with unbearable sorrow To run where the brave dare not go To right the unrightable wrong To love pure and chaste from afar To try when your arms are too weary To reach the unreachable star.

“This is my quest To follow that star No matter how hopeless No matter how far.

“To fight for the right Without question or pause To be willing to march into Hell For a heavenly cause.

“And I know if I'll only be true To this glorious quest That my heart will lie peaceful and calm When I'm laid to my rest.

“And the world will be better for this That one man, scorned and covered with scars Still strove with his last ounce of courage To reach the unreachable star.”

Yet he too says: “O destructive nation! O infamous ones! O nasty race, to what misery have you brought your empty hopes, your crazy folly and your matchless obstinacy, you who summon hardheartedness and obduracy against all truth and reason.” (La gran sultana doña Catalina de Oviedo)

 William Shakespeare (baptized 4/26, 1564-4/23 1616) was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist.  (He might have been a group of authors or a secret one.)  Jews were rare in England at this time since being expelled, still the character-type of Shylock is well known.  Shylock ends by losing both daughter and ducats, as well as his religion.  The character of Shylock has been portrayed differently in generational cycles.  Is Shylock the Jew a villain to be reviled or a tragic figure to be pitied (or perhaps even a pugnacious scrapper to be admired?.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are characters in William Shakespeare's tragedy Hamlet.  They are courtiers who are set by the king to spy on Hamlet, using their claimed friendship with him to gain his confidence.  Rosencrantz ("rosary") and Guildenstern ("golden star") were names of Danish (and Swedish) noble families of the 16th century; records of the Danish royal coronation of 1596 show that one tenth of the aristocrats participating bore one or the other name.  (These sound like Jewish names.  Had Jews already infiltrated Scandinavian royalty?) 

The New Netherland Colony: In 1602 the Netherlands, chartered the United East India Company.  In 1621 the Dutch West India Company obtained a twenty four year trading monopoly in America and Africa and sought to have the New Netherland area formally recognized as a province.

Vincenz Fettmilch (died 1616) was a grocer and gingerbread baker who led the Fettmilch uprising of the guilds in 1612-1616 to get rid of foreigners (mainly Jews) in the city, whom they viewed as competition and usurers.  He directed the Gentile citizens of Frankfurt in August of 1616 when they laid siege to the barricaded ghetto to recover what they declared was stolen property, illicit loan-shark agreements and similar immoral matter accumulated there. It was ironic, and perhaps symbolic, that along with the heaps of promissory notes and mortgages, the Torah scrolls – which forbid usury against other Jews, but allow it against "strangers" - were hurled unceremoniously onto the bonfire.  No Jews were killed, and the entire community was expelled from the city. (A short while later, the city of Worms followed the example and ousted its Jews.)  But, within two years Fettmilch had been executed and all the Jews marched back under escort of the imperial army, accompanied by a band of fifes and trumpets, and the whole parade led by a white-bearded rabbi in a coach with the imperial coat-of-arms.

Thomas Coryat (also Coryate) (c.1577 – 1617) was an English traveler and writer of the late Elizabethan and early Jacobean age.  “To look like a Jew whereby is meant sometimes a weatherbeaten, warp-faced fellow, sometimes a phrenetic and lunatic person, sometimes one discontented.” (Coryate's Crudities)

 Hayyim ben Joseph Vital (1543 –4/23, 1620) was a rabbi in Safed and the foremost disciple of Isaac Luria. He recorded much of his master's teachings. After Vital's death his writings spread having a "powerful impact on various circles throughout the Jewish world."  Vital wrote in his book Gates of Holiness: "Souls of non-Jews come entirely from the female part of the satanic sphere. For this reason souls of non-Jews are called evil, not good and are created without [divine] knowledge."

 ****The Thirty Years' War (1618–1648) was fought primarily on German lands, and at various points involved most of the countries of Europe. Naval warfare also reached overseas and shaped the colonial formation of future nations.  The colder and wetter climate that began around CE 1300 continued to create shorter seasons for farming in Europe.  In the 1590s Europe suffered from periods of prolonged rain, drought and some exceptionally cold and long winters.  In these years, harvest failures occurred in many areas from Scandinavia to Italy.  There was starvation and plague.  More beggars were roaming about.  Spain lost perhaps half a million inhabitants.  Food shortages caused prices of food to rise.  Prophesies were made that the world would end in the year 1600.  Instead came a temporary return of favorable weather and recovery.  But after 1600 and through the century came more agricultural crises, more food shortages, various economic difficulties in Spain, England, France and the Holy Roman Empire, and here and there some population decline.

In 1617 a Habsburg prince from Austria, Ferdinand II (brother of the now deceased Philip II of Spain) was chosen as king of Bohemia. Ferdinand was a pious man, attending masses at all hours and a monarch who went on pilgrimages and endured self-abasement. In 1618, pious Catholic Ferdinand of Austria moved against Lutheranism by closing some churches in Prague.  Lutherans there rebelled.  The Catholic monarch of Bavaria, Maximilian, and the Catholic king of Spain, Philip III, sided with Ferdinand.  Siding with the Lutherans were some German princes.  Another religious war had begun. Between 1618 and 1625, Spanish armies supporting Ferdinand defeated Protestant armies, and with the help of the Jesuits and forced conversions Bohemia and neighboring Moravia were made Catholic.  As part of the drive against Protestantism, hunting witches predominated in prosperous villages, and within three years 250 witches were put to death.  A Lutheran also hunted witches, lesser Protestants.  The anti-witch campaigns reached a climax in Germany in the 1620s, with around 900 burned to death at Würzburg and around 600 at Bamberg.  The persecutions were done with Christian love to save those who stood on the brink of damnation.  Being burned at the stake, it was believed, merely destroyed a person's body, while heresy killed a soul forever.

Initially, the war was fought largely as a religious conflict between Lutherans and Catholics and aggravated by famine and plague, and then it became more a continuation of the Bourbon–Habsburg rivalry for European political pre-eminence.  In 1625 the war widened with the invasion of Germany by the king of Denmark and Norway, Christian IV, who expressed his support for Lutheran princes.  He feared the power of the Habsburgs, and he wished to gain control over the Elbe River.  Habsburg forces won and he made peace in 1629.  The Habsburgs intended to secure power over the Baltic Sea in order to secure power against Denmark and Sweden and to throttle Dutch trade.  Sweden had recently become one of Europe's more prosperous countries, growing from a country of peasants with a barter economy and few towns to a country that attracted foreign investment and a leading producer of iron and copper.  Sweden had grown as a European power, and the Lutheran king of Sweden, Gustavus II, feared a Habsburg move against Sweden's domination of the Baltic Sea.  Gustavus invaded northern Germany at Pomerania on June 6, 1630.  Lutheran princes joined Gustavus' forces, and in 1631 they crushed the Catholic Habsburg forces securing northern Germany for Protestantism.  Lutheran Germany hailed Gustavus as a liberator.  The Swedes drove as far south as Augsburg and Munich, and peasants in Bavaria responded to bullying from soldiers in Sweden's army by waging a small-scale war against them.  In 1634, the Habsburgs defeated the Swedes near Munich, and Gustavas of Sweden had gained Catholic France as an ally.  France was concerned with Habsburg power -- power rivalry counting for more than the Catholic-Protestant conflict.  France's army was small, poorly trained and equipped compared to the Habsburg forces.  In 1635 the French marched eastward and crossed the Rhine River.  The last and bloodiest phase of the war had begun in places in Italy, along the border between Spain and France, and between Denmark and Sweden, and the United Netherlands joined France in war against Spain.  In 1639, the navy of the United Netherlands annihilated the Spanish fleet.  Portugal revolted against rule by Spain's Habsburg king and, in 1640, re-established its independence.

Entire regions were denuded by the foraging armies.  Episodes of famine and disease significantly decreased the populace of the German states, Bohemia, the Low Countries and Italy, while bankrupting most of the combatant powers.  Soldiers often switched sides as Armies were expected to be largely self-funding from loot taken or tribute extorted from the settlements where they operated.  Most of the fighting was in Germany, with soldiers and their camp followers trooping through the country.  These mercenaries, in the tradition of knight-warriors, still believed that they were superior in rank to the common peasants.  Discipline among them was lax, and criminal elements among the soldiers influenced those who had not been criminally inclined.  Soldiers continued to bully and plundered peasants, and peasants continued to fight back, killing soldiers.  The war damaged German fields.  Bubonic plague and syphilis appeared.  There were more witch hunts. Food shortages arose.  Refugees from south-central Germany flocked into northern Germany.  Pogroms against Jews occurred in cities such as Frankfort, Worms and Jena.

“The Thirty Years' War... brought destruction, starvation, and pestilence.  Again the spleen of dispossessed princes and impoverished and outraged peasants was vented upon the Jews who had achieved prosperity through their purchases and trade…The Jews... have been a supernation rather than members of a nation.  More than any other people, certainly up to the time of the emancipation, they were innocent of and irresponsible toward the national traditions and aspirations of the people among whom they lived…The Ghetto was rather a privilege than a disability and sometimes was claimed by the Jews as a right when its demolition was threatened. – “Jews in a Gentile World: The Problem of Antisemitism” (1942) by Isacque Graeber; Britt Graeber and Stewart Henderson

 “Many Jewish businessmen in the 17th century laid the foundation for his modest fortune by his purchase and disposal of the debris left on the battlefield of the Thirty Years War.  Of course, foraging for one's own duke behind enemy lines, or even within one's own lines, was dangerous work, and not infrequently Jews were caught and executed as spies...” “The Course of Modern Jewish History” by Howard Sachar

**Jews had long been distrusted through their business dealings with Gentiles.   Before the war Jews led a highly restrictive life.  The Cossack Catholic and populist pogroms of the late 1500’s killed over 40,000 socially troublesome Jews.  On top of this Jews were only allowed to live in a very few European countries.  England had expelled its Jewish population in 1290 and France and Spain followed suit in 1394 and 1492 respectively.  Yet the Jews succeeded greatly in the economic sphere. Many Jews had made fortunes off of the trading and exploratory voyages of Spain and Portugal in the fifteenth century.  Also, many Jews, as a result of religious tendencies of Christians, were bankers.  Thus, in many places, they were the sole suppliers of loans and bank accounts. Thus, many Jews were wealthy and experienced in international matters.   As the Thirty Years War raged on, The Holy Roman Emperor began to run out of money.  Jews could provide loans in exchange for certain freedoms that Christian bankers took for granted.  In this way the treasury would be refilled without having to repay expensive loans.  As result of this relationship the Jewish Quarter in Prague, was spared when the rest of the city was burned to the ground by the Imperial army.  This ghetto was also enlarged and improved.  In 1623, in exchange for a large, no interest loan to the Holy Roman Emperor, Jews in Italian cities were allowed to trade in wine, cloth, and grain.   As the war continued, and the other participants began to run out of money they too developed this strategy.   In Vienna a community of Jews was allowed to build a synagogue.  Up to this point the building of synagogues had been outlawed since 1421.  In nearly every major city in Europe Jews were granted access to trade fairs.  They had been systematically banished from all trade fairs because of their unfair business practices.  Thus, as a result of the cost of the war, Jews were reintegrated into society.

 ****Court Jews (Court contractors and suppliers).  Medieval princes used the commercial and financial services of individual Jews.  However, as an institution, the Court Jew is a feature of the absolutist state, especially in Central Europe, from the end of the 16th century onward.  In Poland many landed estates were administered by Jews and a large part of the trade in agricultural products was in their hands.  This, combined with the emergence of early Jewish capitalist commercial activity by Sephardim in the Netherlands, with their connections with Levantine trade through Jews in the Ottoman Empire, made the Jew in Central Europe particularly suited to be an agent for provisioning armies with grain, timber, and cattle, as well as a supplier of diamonds and other goods for conspicuous consumption.  The Jews with their far-reaching connections could help, through the frequent supply of commercial credit or ready cash, as also through the supply of foodstuffs, cloth, and weapons for the army, the most important instrument of the prince's power.  Jews were managers of the mints.

Their rights were similarly various; the chief privileges included direct access to the prince, exemption from the jurisdiction of the rabbinical courts, and freedom to travel and settle anywhere in the empire.  Their highly varied activities included finance, commerce, and diplomacy, but they were responsible especially for providing the prince and his court with merchandise and money, supplying metal for the mint, provisioning the army, undertaking commercial and diplomatic missions, and investigating proposals for the promotion of trade and industry, e.g., tobacco.

Industrious and often restless, the Court Jews showed a strong drive toward success, both in business and social status, with the allied urge "to assimilate as completely as possible to his environment in speech, dress, and manners".  The personal relationship between the prince and the Court Jew was based not only on common interests but also on the isolation in which both lived: the prince in his omnipotence and inaccessibility and the Court Jew because of his descent and religion.  Thanks to his privileged position, frequently, he could procure the right to establish new settlements and prepare the way for emancipation. 

Protestant and Catholic princes alike opened their courts to Jews.  In all their varied activities, the Court Jews played a remarkable part in the development of international credit facilities especially in the Central European states and to some degree in northern Europe also, from the mid-17th to late-18th centuries.  Generally, they were agents who arranged transfers of credit rather than possessors of vast capital in their own right; through their far-reaching commercial relationships, they were able to provide funds more swiftly than most Christian bankers.  Because of their specialization in the money business, they were able to furnish the silver for the mints more easily and could better act as army purveyors, once more because of their network of family relationships.  There is no doubt that they were instrumental in the growth of the modern absolute state, and at the end of the era there emerged a group of several important Jewish private bankers who exemplify the transition to modern methods of economy and government, primarily the Rothschilds, the Goldschmidts, the Oppenheimers, and the Seligmanns.  However, it should not be forgotten that the courts had their Christian bankers, entrepreneurs, and army agents, too, who also played a part in this development.

Mirror of the Polish Crown - Sebastian Miczynski was a 16th/17th century Polish academic.  In 1618, on special commission from the city government of Kracow, he wrote a monumental study of the supposed financial and criminal activities of the Jews of Poland, (Mirror of the Polish Crown).  In this pamphlet Jews were accused with political treachery, robbery, swindling, murder, witchcraft, sacrilege, however religious accusations are of secondary importance.  The pamphlet mainly focuses on the economic activities of the Jews and advocates the expulsion of the Jews from Poland.  It was suppressed.

****1619  "God Save the Queen (King)" is an anthem used in a number of Commonwealth realms.  God Save the Queen (standard version): 1. God save our gracious Queen, Long live our noble Queen, God save the Queen: Send her victorious, Happy and glorious, Long to reign over us: God save the Queen.    2.O Lord, our God, arise, Scatter her enemies, And make them fall. Confound their politics, Frustrate their knavish tricks, On Thee our hopes we fix, God save us all.    3.Thy choicest gifts in store, On her be pleased to pour; Long may she reign: May she defend our laws, And ever give us cause To sing with heart and voice God save the Queen

John Bull (1562 or 1563 – 3/15, 1628) was an English composer, musician, and organ builder. He was a renowned keyboard performer of the virginalist school and most of his compositions were written for this medium.  He is sometimes attributed with the composition of God Save the King, the British national anthem.

 ****1620   Jewish Slavery -Jew traders bring slaves to America.  Of course slavery is as old as civilization, but is already being frowned against as contrary to the liberty of Christ by Westerners.  Jewish ship owners dominated slave trade.  Jews, with their religious contempt for others have always been in the forefront of slavery, centuries earlier helping the Muslims enslave Christians.  In 1740, Jewish slave trader Aaron Lopez brings thousands of slaves to America.  Probably 90% of slave ship owners were Jewish.  It is Christians in Western nations who begin to abolish slavery.

“Besides their important position in the sugar industry and in tax farming, they dominated the slave trade.  From 1636 to 1645 a total of 23,163 Negro slaves arrived from Africa and were sold for 6,714,423 florins.  The West India Company, which monopolized imports of slaves from Africa, sold slaves at public auctions against cash payment. It happened that cash was mostly in the hands of Jews.  The buyers who appeared at the auctions were almost always Jews, and because of this lack of competitors they could buy slaves at low prices.  On the other hand, there also was no competition in the selling of the slaves to the plantation owners and other buyers, and most of them purchased on credit payable at the next harvest in sugar.  Profits up to 300 percent of the purchase value were often realized with high interest rates.... If it happened that the date of such an auction fell on a Jewish holiday the auction had to be postponed.- “Jews in Colonial Brazil” (1960), the former President of the Brazilian-Jewish Institute of Historical Research, Arnold Aharon Wiznitzer

Robert Burton (2/8 1577 – 1/25 1640) was an English scholar, best known for the classic “The Anatomy of Melancholy” (1621) where he called Jews "a company of vagabonds" with "horrible hardness of heart”.

Sir Henry Finch, MP, 1558-1625 wrote “The World's Great Restoration, or Calling of the Jews and with them of all Nations and Kingdoms of the Earth to the Faith of Christ” (which was published in 1621. In this, Finch invited the Jews to reassert their claim to their ‘Promised Land.’ He went on to predict their establishment of a world-wide empire and said that the Christian Monarchs of the world would pay homage to them when they were, thus, established...“... out of all the places of thy dispersion, East, West, North and South, HIS purpose is to bring thee home and to marry thee to Himself by faith for evermore. Instead that thou wast desolate and forsaken, and sattest as a widow, thou shalt flourish as in the days of thy youth, ay, above and beyond thy youth. 

 1624 Shamballa/ Shangri-La  Father António de Andrade (1580 – 3/19, 1634) was a Jesuit priest and explorer from Portugal.  He entered the Society of Jesus in 1596. From 1600 until his death in 1634 he was engaged in missionary activity in India.  Andrade was the first European to cross the Himalayas and reach Tibet, establishing the first Catholic mission on Tibetan soil.

In August, 1624 Andrade enters a hidden Valley which may be the Valley of legend.  It was green from irrigation canals and populated.  The King who had hidden his family here from enemies was not thrilled to discover that Andrade was not a trader but instead a priest of a foreign religion.   After Andrade explained that he had come to search for his co-religionists who were believed to be living somewhere in Tibet and also to learn something of the religion of the local people, the king authorized the construction of a Christian "house of prayer" in Tsaparang.

Tsaparang was the capital of the ancient kingdom of Guge in the Garuda Valley in Western Tibet.  It contains numerous tunnels and caves that have been carved out of the rock.  At its base was a village where the common people lived.  Above them were two public temples and quarters for the monks.  Further up were the royal quarters.  Historian Michael Wood, in the "Shangri-La" episode of a PBS documentary, suggested that Tsaparang was the historical origin of the legend of Shangri-La.  Guge controlled an ancient trading route between India and Tibet. It became an important regional power by the 10th century CE.  In the 11th century, King Yeshe O, reintroduced Buddhism to western Tibet. Soon Tsaparang, and Tholing, also made of mud brick, were built, along with other temples and monasteries.  The influence of the Guge Kingdom was felt from Kashmir to Assam.

Andrade left Tibet in 1628, and in 1630 the king of Ladakh, invaded and overthrew the kingdom.  Andrade was assassinated in Goa in 1634.  The royal family was assassinated in 1685, their bodies thrown into a cave.  In 1679-80-1685 Tsaparang and the Guge kingdom was conquered by by the Central Tibetan government in Lhasa under the leadership of the 5th Dalai Lama.  Destruction happened then, and by the Red Guards during the 1966 Cultural Revolution, still many magnificent ancient frescoes have somehow survived.

(see James Hilton, 1933)

1625 "A New Dial" (also known as "In Those Twelve Days"), a song which dates to at least 1625 and assigns religious meanings to each of the twelve days of Christmas (but not for the purposes of teaching a catechism).: “What are they that are but one? We have one God alone In heaven above sits on His throne.;  What are they which are but two? Two testaments, the old and new, We do acknowledge to be true.;  What are they which are but three? Three persons in the Trinity Which make one God in unity.;  What are they which are but four Four sweet Evangelists there are, Christ's birth, life, death which do declare.;  What are they which are but five? Five senses, like five kings, maintain In every man a several reign.;  What are they which are but six? Six days to labor is not wrong, For God himself did work so long.;  What are they which are but seven? Seven liberal arts hath God sent down With divine skill man's soul to crown.; What are they which are but eight? Eight Beatitudes are there given Use them right and go to heaven.;  What are they which are but nine? Nine Muses, like the heaven's nine spheres, With sacred tunes entice our ears.;  What are they which are but ten? Ten statutes God to Moses gave Which, kept or broke, do spill or save.;  What are they which are but eleven? Eleven thousand virgins did partake And suffered death for Jesus' sake.;  What are they which are but twelve? Twelve are attending on God's son; Twelve make our creed. The Dial's done.”

(Using ordinary objects to represent biblical concepts is a common device, as exemplified by the several popular recordings of Deck of Cards.)

 Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Albans, KC (1/22 1561 – 4/9 1626) was an English philosopher, statesman, scientist, lawyer, jurist, author and pioneer of the scientific method.  He served both as Attorney General and Lord Chancellor of England.  Bacon has been called the father of empiricism.  Claire Jowitt further identifies and investigates Baconʼs contradictory depiction of Jews, saying that they are just as complex.: " “In addition, there was a strong tradition of anti-Semitic depictions of Jews in circulation that imagined them as treasonous, sexually monstrous, foul smelling, and guilty of the ritual murder of Christians...Jews were only seen positively because they were imminently expected to convert.”   “New Atlantis” (1624) is a utopian novel by Bacon.  In this work, Bacon portrayed a vision of the future of human discovery and knowledge, expressing his aspirations and ideals for humankind.  The novel depicts the creation of a utopian land where "generosity and enlightenment, dignity and splendour, piety and public spirit" are the commonly held qualities of the inhabitants of "Bensalem".  The plan and organization of his ideal college, "Salomon's House" (or Solomon's House) envisioned the modern research university in both applied and pure sciences.  This island only welcomes Christians except for Joabin the Jew, who is both wise and good.  Yet, Bacon named him Joabin.  In the Bible Joab was the untrustworthy nephew of king David.  Also he says in New Atlantis: “For whereas they hate the name of Christ, and have a secret inbred rancor against the people among whom they live;…”  He also disapproved of non-Jewish usurers as "Judaizers" who would wear "tawny bonnets" like Jews.   

In 1623, 126 years after the conversion of Portuguese Jewry, a Portuguese scholar held that “a little Jewish blood is enough to destroy the world.”

John Fletcher (1579–1625) was a Jacobean playwright who followed William Shakespeare as house playwright for the King's Men.  He was among the most prolific and influential dramatists of his day; both during his lifetime and in the early Restoration, and his fame rivaled Shakespeare's.  Francis Beaumont (1584 – 3/6 1616) was a dramatist in the English Renaissance theatre, most famous for his collaborations with John Fletcher.  “The Custom of the Country” is a Jacobean stage play, a tragicomedy written by John Fletcher and Philip Massinger, based upon Persiles y Sigismunda by Cervantes, is an extremely licentious play that introduces us to the strange world of the Jew, Zabulon, a panderer of slaves for sexual purposes.  In the finale, he walks in procession downstage, holding hands with the 'madam' of a male brothel, and spouting obscenities at everything imaginable.  Philip Massinger (1583 – 3/17 1640) was an English dramatist.  Jewish caricatures also occur in The Double Marriage (with Massinger, 1647), The Scornful Lady (with Beaumont 1616) and The Woman Pleased (1647). 

François de Malherbe (1555 – 10/16, 1628) was a French poet, critic, and translator.  After a Jew murdered his son and he was unsuccessful at securing justice in the lawcourts, he wrote to a friend: “Judaism has spread as far as the Seine. It would be better if it had remained beside the Jordan and if this rabble had not mingled, as it has done, with respectable people.  There is no help for it. My cause is a just one. I shall fight everywhere with God's help, even in Jerusalem and with the Twelve Tribes of Israel!” (Works, preface)

Robert Daborne (c.1580 – 3/23 1628) was an English dramatist of the Jacobean era.  He told of Benwash, a Jew, as a receiver of stolen property and an all-around blackguard in “A Christian Turn'd Turk”.

Johannes Buxtorf the Elder (1564-1629) was one of the greatest Christian Hebraists. His contributions ranged from Bible to rabbinics to what we today would call ethnography.  Buxtorf maintained relations with several learned Jews.  Yet, Buxtorf also accused the Jews of deceptions and contrasted the carnal reign of the Jewish Messiah with the spirituality of the Christian Messiah.  He alleged that Jews conspired to corrupt the food that Christians ate: “they defile and corrupt this meat with the urine of their sons and daughters” so that Christians would suffer a deadly curse.  [This suspicion should be considered today, Jews, especially Orthodox Jews, do not care about health standards for Gentiles and often use corrupted food materials.  Also how should we think about GMO foods?]

****Kosher Foods conform to Jewish regulations, kosher meaning fit or allowed to be eaten.  A list of some kosher foods are found in the book of Leviticus 11:1-47.  There are also certain kosher rules found there.  Reasons for food not being kosher include the presence of ingredients derived from nonkosher animals or from kosher animals that were not properly slaughtered, a mixture of meat and milk, wine or grape juice (or their derivatives) produced without supervision, or the use of nonkosher cooking utensils and machinery. 

Pierre de Lancre (1553–1631)-By his own boast, witch trial judge Pierre de Lancre tortured and burned more than 600 men and women accused of consorting with demons.  In his books, de Lancre defended the belief in demons, black magic, and witchcraft.  He believed that sorcerers and witches were a well-organized anti-social force that sought to overthrow the established order.  It was customary for the judges of the witchcraft trials to denounce Jews as heretics and sorcerers.  De Lancre was no exception, once stating that God had withdrawn his grace and promises from the Jewish people.  He claimed also to have it on great authority that many Jews were powerful magicians who had the ability to shapeshift into wolves by night.

John Speed (1542–1629) was an English historian and cartographer, whose maps of English counties are often found framed in homes throughout the United Kingdom.  Speed took a strong position against Jewish influence in his History of Great Britaine.  He said the Jews "ate the English nation to its bones" in the years before their expulsion by Edward I in 1290.

Tirso de Molina (Oct 1571? – 3/12, 1648) was a Spanish Baroque dramatist, poet and a Roman Catholic monk who wrote the first version of the Don Juan legend-  (The Trickster of Seville and the Stone Guest, 1630).  He almost always referred to the Jews with the phrase "infamous Jew".   In Prudence in Women, he calls Jews "the most ruinous nation under the sun, hated and feared by the world."

 A City upon a Hill is a phrase from the parable of Salt and Light in Jesus' Sermon on the Mount.  In Matthew 5:14, he tells his listeners, "You are the light of the world.  A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden."  The phrase entered the American lexicon early in its history, in the Puritan John Winthrop's 1630 sermon "A Model of Christian Charity" portraying Boston.  Winthrop's sermon gave rise to the widespread belief in American folklore that the United States of America is God's country because metaphorically it is a Shining City upon a Hill, an early example of American exceptionalism.  This speech also emphasized the obligation of the rich to care for the poor, with the poor being obligated to do the best they could.

 John Donne (1/24 or 6/19, 1572 –3/ 31 1631), English poet, satirist, lawyer, and priest, is now considered the preeminent representative of the metaphysical poets.  His works are notable for their strong and sensual style and include sonnets, love poetry, religious poems, Latin translations, epigrams, elegies, songs, satires and sermons.  His poetry is noted for its vibrancy of language and inventiveness of metaphor, especially as compared to that of his contemporaries.  John Donne's style is characterized by abrupt openings, various paradoxes, ironies, dislocations. These features in combination with his frequent dramatic or everyday speech rhythms, his tense syntax, and his tough eloquence were both a reaction against the smoothness of conventional Elizabethan poetry and an adaptation into English of European baroque and mannerist techniques.  His early career was marked by poetry that bore immense knowledge of British society and he met that knowledge with sharp criticism.  Another important theme in Donne’s poetry was the idea of true religion.  The Holy Sonnets, also known as the Divine Meditations or Divine Sonnets, are a series of nineteen poems by the English poet John Donne. Never published during his lifetime but widely circulated in manuscript, they have become some of Donne's most popular poems and are widely anthologized.  Revised sequence: 1)As due by many titles I resign ; 2)O my black soul! now thou art summoned ; 3)This is my play's last scene, here heavens appoint ; 4)At the round earth's imagined corners, blow ; 5)If poisonous minerals, and if that tree ; 6)Death be not proud, though some have called thee ; 7)Spit in my face you Jews, and pierce my side ; 8)Why are we by all creatures waited on? ; 8)What if this present were the world's last night? ; 10)Batter my heart, three-personed God; for you ; 11)Wilt thou love God, as he thee! then digest ; 12)Father, part of his double interest.  “No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as a manor of thy friends or of thine own were; any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind. And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”

 ****Witchcraft – While there are those who pervert Christian theologies with a revenge mentality, the majority of witches were probably just Outsiders, Troublemakers or Pagans working with pagan medicine/magic.  It’s easy for those in control to want to dissuade or eliminate those outside of the mainstream.  In 2010, those are the ones who are outside of Political Correctness, symbolized as various forms of nationalism, militia, and critics of the regime.

 ****Oberammergau Passion Play is a passion play performed since 1634 as a tradition by the inhabitants of the village of Oberammergau, Bavaria, Germany.   It is performed every ten years and the Jews have spoken very strongly against it these later years.

 ****Puritans were a significant grouping of English Protestants founded by some Marian exiles from the clergy shortly after the accession of Elizabeth I of England in 1559, as an activist movement within the Church of England.  The Marian Exiles were English Calvinist Protestants who fled to the continent during the reign of Queen "Bloody" Mary I.

Particularly in the years after 1630, Puritans left for New England, supporting the founding of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and other settlements. The large-scale Puritan emigration to New England then ceased, by 1641, with around 21,000 with more than 16 million descendants.  The Puritans of the Massachusetts Bay Colony were the most active of the New England persecutors of Quakers.  Alexis de Tocqueville suggested in Democracy in America that Puritanism was the very thing that provided a firm foundation for American democracy.

 Pilgrims is a name applied to early settlers of the Plymouth Colony.  Their leadership came from the religious congregations of English Dissenters who had fled the volatile political environment in the East Midlands of England for the relative calm and tolerance of Holland in the Netherlands. Concerned with losing their cultural identity, the group later arranged with English investors to establish a new colony in North America.  The colony, established in 1620, became the oldest continuously inhabited British settlement and the second successful English settlement (after the founding of Jamestown, Virginia in 1607).  The Pilgrims' story of seeking religious freedom has become a central theme of the history and culture of the United States.

The Puritans and Pilgrims identified with Israel of the Old Testament and were literalists who tried to enact the Old Testament (as well as the New!) into their society.  Because of this they eventually became philo-Jews.

In a parallel, as the story of the Pilgrims is part of the American story which all Americans adopt.  The story of Israel in the Old Testament is a cohesive national story which disparate tribes adopted as they joined the nation of Israel.

In the 1600s, New England mothers rocked their children to sleep with this lullaby: “Yet to read the shameful story, How the Jews abused their king, How they served the Lord of Glory, Makes me angry while I sing.”

 Thanksgiving Day is celebrated each year on the second Monday of October in Canada and on the fourth Thursday of November in the U S.  In the English tradition, days of thanksgiving and special thanksgiving religious services became important during the English Reformation in the reign of Henry VIII and in reaction to the large number of religious holidays on the Catholic calendar.  Before 1536 there were 95 Church holidays. The 1536 reforms reduced the number of Church holidays to 27, but some Puritans, the radical reformers of their age, wished to completely eliminate all Church holidays, including Christmas and Easter.  The holidays were to be replaced by specially called Days of Fasting or Days of Thanksgiving, in response to events that the Puritans viewed as acts of special providence. Pilgrims and Puritans who began emigrating from England in the 1620s and 1630s carried the tradition of Days of Fasting and Days of Thanksgiving with them to New England.  The dates of Thanksgiving in the era of the Founding Fathers until the time of Lincoln had been decided by each state on various dates.  The first Thanksgiving celebrated on the same date by all states was in 1863 by presidential proclamation. (Jewish media is now often calling it Turkey Day.)

Greetings & Farewells:

The Paschal greeting is an Easter custom among Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, and Eastern Catholic Christians, as well as among some Roman Catholic and Protestant Christians.  Instead of "hello" or its equivalent, one is to greet another person with "Christ is Risen!", and the response is "Truly, He is Risen".  In some cultures, such as in Russia and Serbia, it is also customary to exchange a triple kiss on the alternating cheeks after the greeting.

Christian Farewell: Several Christian nations speak of God in their farewells.  “Good-Bye” evolved from God be with Ye.  The Latins have the Spanish Adios and the French Adieu which both translate to "See you with God".

Adam Contzen (4/17, 1571—6/19, 1635) was a German Jesuit economist and exegete.  He stressed the need to view all Jews as poisonous animals, confiscate their landed property and to drive them away.  He recalled the glorious princes, who have actually done so.  In his book on the assets of the public.

Armand Jean du Plessis, Cardinal-Duc de Richelieu et de Fronsac (9/9, 1585 – 12/4, 1642) was a French clergyman, noble and statesman.  Consecrated as a bishop in 1608, he later entered politics, becoming a Secretary of State in 1616.  Richelieu soon rose in both the Catholic Church and the French government, becoming a Cardinal in 1622, and King Louis XIII's chief minister in 1624.  He remained in office until his death in 1642; he was succeeded by Cardinal Mazarin, whose career he had fostered.  By restraining the power of the nobility, he transformed France into a strong, centralized state.  His chief foreign policy objective was to check the power of the Austro-Spanish Habsburg dynasty, and to ensure French dominance in the Thirty Years' War that engulfed Europe.  Although he was a cardinal, he did not hesitate to make alliances with Protestant rulers in attempting to achieve his goals.  Richelieu was also famous for his patronage of the arts.  He is also a leading character in The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas.

 Manoel Dias Soeiro (1604 – 11/20, 1657), better known by his Hebrew name Menasseh Ben Israel (also, Menasheh ben Yossef ben Yisrael, also known with the Hebrew acronym, MB"Y), was a Portuguese rabbi, kabbalist, scholar, writer, diplomat, printer and publisher, founder of the first Hebrew printing press (named Emeth Meerets Titsma`h) in Amsterdam in 1626.

Menasseh rose to eminence not only as a rabbi and an author, but also as a printer.  He established the first Hebrew press in Holland.  One of his earliest works, El Conciliador, won immediate reputation; it was an attempt at reconciliation between apparent discrepancies in various parts of the Old Testament.  Among his correspondents were Gerhard Johann Vossius, Hugo Grotius, and Pierre Daniel Huet.  In 1638, he decided to settle in Brazil, as he still found it difficult to provide for his wife and family in Amsterdam.  Even though he may have visited the Dutch colony's capital of Recife, he in the end appears to not have moved there.  One of the reasons his financial situation improved in Amsterdam was the arrival there in the meantime of the Portuguese Jewish entrepreneurs, the brothers Abraham and Isaac Pereyra.  Rabbi Manasseh was then employed by them to direct a small college or academy (in fact a Yeshibah in Spanish Portuguese parlance of the time) they had founded in the city.."  

Disputed portrait of Menasseh Ben Israel by RembrandtIn 1644, Menasseh met Antonio de Montesinos, who convinced him that the South America Andes' Indians were the descendants of the lost ten tribes of Israel.  This supposed discovery gave a new impulse to Menasseh's Messianic hopes.  But he was convinced that the Messianic age needed as its certain precursor the settlement of Jews in all parts of the known world.  Filled with this idea, he turned his attention to England, whence the Jews had been expelled since 1290.  He found much Christian support in England.  During the Commonwealth the question of the readmission of the Jews was often mooted under the growing desire for religious liberty.  Besides this, Messianic and other mystic hopes were current in England.  In 1650, there appeared an English version of the Hope of Israel, a tract which deeply impressed public opinion.  Oliver Cromwell had been moved to sympathy with the Jewish cause partly by his tolerant leanings, but chiefly because he foresaw the importance for English commerce of the presence of the Jewish merchant princes, some of whom had already found their way to London.  At this juncture, Jews received full rights in the colony of Surinam, which had been English since 1650.

Félix Arturo Lope de Vega y Carpio (11/25 1562 – 8/27 1635) was a Spanish playwright and poet.  He was one of the key figures in the Spanish Golden Century Baroque literature.  One of the world's great playwrights, beloved in Spain as "the phoenix of the geniuses," Lope wholeheartedly supported the expulsion of the Jews in 1492 by Isabel and Fernando.  He called them "this inhuman enemy of our land" and repeated the sordid story of Jewish collusion with the Moors against the Christians.  (“The Innocent Child Guard and Brazil Restored”)

1636 Of the first 108 universities founded in America, 106 were distinctly Christian, including the first, Harvard University, chartered in 1636.  In the original Harvard Student Handbook, rule number 1 was that students seeking entrance must know Latin and Greek so that they could study the scriptures: "Let every student be plainly instructed and earnestly pressed to consider well, the main end of his life and studies is, to know God and Jesus Christ, which is eternal life, John 17:3; and therefore to lay Jesus Christ as the only foundation for our children to follow the moral principles of the Ten Commandments?”

 Frederick William (February 16, 1620 – April 29, 1688) was the Elector of Brandenburg and the Duke of Prussia ("Brandenburg-Prussia") from 1640 until his death.  He was of the House of Hohenzollern and is popularly known as the Great Elector (Der Große Kurfürst) because of his military and political skill.  Frederick William was also a staunch pillar of the Calvinist faith, associated with the rising commercial class.  He saw the importance of trade and promoted it vigorously.  The Great Elector's shrewd domestic reforms gave Prussia a strong position in the post-Westphalia political order of north-central Europe, setting Prussia up for elevation from duchy to kingdom, achieved under his successor.   After the 30 years war he reformed economic conditions and broke the hold of the guilds.  He encouraged Jews and other foreigners to settle in his lands, and is accredited with building up Prussia as an important power.

1642 Domingos Bracamonte, Portuguese physician, poet.  Banquete que Apolo hizo... contains a strong attack on corrupt doctors and Jews in the Portuguese court.  Bracamonte disappeared and died in an unknown manner.

 The "martyrdom" of Anderl.  The killers are clearly marked as Jews by their clothes and turbans (one form of the "special mark" Jews were forced to carry by Church decree). The third, lower, figure is collecting the child's blood in a bowl.  literally "they cut throat of the martyr and take all blood from him" or in other words, "They cut the martyr's throat and drain all his blood."

 The "martyrdom" of Anderl at Sanctuary Judenstein (from 1961).  In 1642, a convent doctor wrote a book in rhyme about Anderl (Andreas) Oxner von Rinn, a 3 year old boy who was ritually murdered 7/12, 1462.   The oldest written document that reports from Anderl cult dates back to the year 1621.  The plot of the play already all key figures of the martyrs legends are spread out: the three-year Anderlecht is sold by his greedy godfathers to bloodthirsty Jews.  From this Jesuit drama came mid-17th Century folk plays, called Anderlecht games.  The feast of "Anderl von Rinn" was expunged in 1953.  Nevertheless, there is still every year on the Sunday after the 12th July, a privately organized hike to the "Jews Stone" at Rinn.  

Francisco Gómez de Quevedo y Santibáñez Villegas (9/14 1580 – 9/8 1645) was a Spanish nobleman, politician and writer of the Baroque era.  Along with his lifelong rival, Luis de Góngora, Quevedo was one of the most prominent Spanish poets of the age.  His style is characterized by what was called conceptismo.   “The Jews are the swindlers of Europe.”;  “The Jews founded the new sect of moneyism, combining the repute of atheists and thieves.”; “They are so exquisitely detestable because, after God had spoken to them and defended them and aggrandized them with victories, they fell into adoring the fat belly of a Beelzebub or a Baalim.”

End of the Thirty Year War

**The Peace of Westphalia - Germany, it is said, had lost a third of its urban population and two-fifths of its rural people. Negotiations at Westphalia were the choosing of Nation-States over the universalism that had been part of the Christian Empire.  The settlement spoke of a "Christian and universal peace, and a perpetual, true and sincere amity."  The borders of German principalities were restored to what had been in 1618.  The Peace of Westphalia gave recognition to secular kingship as the legitimate and dominant form of government.  The sovereignty of Switzerland and the United Netherlands was recognized.  With this new order Europe's period of religious wars came to an end.

The settlement returned to the Habsburgs their rule in Bohemia, but it recognized the end of Habsburg predominance in Europe.  It was France that emerged as the preeminent power on the European continent -- a victory for French arms and diplomacy.  France was now the arbiter of Europe.  Its authority in fragmented Germany was becoming greater than Germany's so-called Holy Roman Emperor.  France's navy had increased as a challenge to the navies of the British and the Dutch. Sweden gained Western Pomerania and bishoprics in Bremen and Stettin.  They also gained control over the mouths of the Oder, Elbe and Weser rivers and emerged from the war as one of Europe's great powers. Spain was compelled to make peace with France in 1659.  It was no longer considered the greatest power in Europe. It had emerged from the war without Portugal -- which had declared its independence in 1641.  It had exposed its weakness to Latin Americans.  It was no longer "the Colossus of the Seas."  The war had increased centralization of power.  New taxations had arisen and new governmental organization -- to include subsidies to specific industries.  Spain's central government had subjugated governmental bureaucracy to its absolute power -- a new absolutism that was spreading in Europe.  Government organization increased also in Sweden.  There a new war council had been created, charged with recruitment and supplies for the military.   In France the reign of Louis XIV had begun (in 1643) to last to 1715, the longest reign in European history, with France's monarchy reaching its peak in absolutism, claiming unity with God, the source of absolute power -- rule by divine right. [This in German memory is similar to the American Civil War.]

The term Peace of Westphalia denotes the two peace treaties of Osnabrück (May 15, 1648) and Münster (October 24, 1648) that ended the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648) in the Holy Roman Empire, and the Eighty Years' War (1568–1648) between Spain and the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands.

Until this time, Europeans thought of themselves solely as Christians versus the outsiders among them, mostly the Jews.  Now Europeans are beginning to think of themselves as different nationalities and Jews then do, culminating in Zionist theory.

**The British Empire supplants the Dutch Empire

Alexander Brome (1620 – 6/30, 1666) was an English poet and was the author of many drinking songs and of satirical verses in favor of the Royalists and in opposition to the Rump Parliament.  “Upon The Cavaliers Departing Out Of London” (1648): “Now the Christian religion/Must seek a new region,/And the old saints give way to the new;/And we that are loyal/Vail to those that destroy all,/When the Christian gives place to the Jew. 

 1649 King Charles I is executed by Oliver Cromwell.  Cromwell is financed by the Jews, especially Ferdinand Carvajal of London and Isaac Suasso of Amsterdam.  Cromwell allows Jews to return to England.  Oliver Cromwell had in his pay a whole crew of Jewish spies.  Nobility and property was initially meant to honor the individual only and cease when that one died.  There were rules of reciprocity between nobles and serfs and freemen.  Gradually the title and property began to be inherited. Many with the property, but without the inner nobility to maintain it became poor.  Throughout the next centuries, poorer nobles allowed their sons and daughters to marry rich Jews, creating an in-breeding of nobility with mixed loyalties.  Thus the nobility separated even further from the common man.  Oliver Cromwell (4/25, 1599 – 9/3, 1658) was an English military and political leader best known for his involvement in making England into a republican Commonwealth and for his later role as Lord Protector of England, Scotland, and Ireland.  One of the reasons for Cromwell's alleged interest in the return of the Jews to England was the abundance at the time of theories relating to the end of the world.  Many of these ideas were fixed upon the year 1666 and the Fifth Monarchy Men who were looking for the return of Jesus as the Messiah who would establish a final kingdom to rule the physical world for a thousand years.  They supported Cromwell's Republic in the expectation that it was a preparation for the fifth monarchy - that is, the monarchy which should succeed the Assyrian, the Persian, the Greek, and Roman world empires.

 William Prynne (1600 – 10/24, 1669) was an English lawyer, author, polemicist, and political figure.  Although his views on church polity were presbyterian, he became known in the 1640s as an Erastian, arguing for overall state control of religious matters.  A prolific writer, he published over 200 books and pamphlets.  In his “Short Demurrer to the Jewes long discontinued Remitter into England”, 1656, gave details and references of the Ritual Murders at Norwich, Gloucester, and Bury St. Edmunds in England, and those of Blois, Braisne, Richard "of Paris," Fulda, Prague, Werner of Oberwesel, Rudolph of Berne, Simon of Trent and others.  In Book I, p. 67, he says: "The Jews . . . have ofttimes . . . maliciously acted it [crucifixion] over and again in representation; . . . by crucifying sundry Christian children on Good Friday or near Easter, on a Crosse, in a most barbarous manner, in derision of our Saviour's death and passion."  On p. 68 he quotes several authorities "that the Jews in Paris did every year steal some Christian child, or another brought up in the King's Court, and carrying him to a secret house or vault, did, on Good Friday or Easter-Day, in contempt and derision of Christ and Christian religion crucify him on a Crosse . . . and that they have been frequently apprehended, persevering in this wickednesse; for which, upon Direction, they were usually murdered, stoned, burned, destroyed, hanged, by the furious multitude's violence, or executed, imprisoned, banished by Christian Kings and Magistrates, yet such was their malice to Christ, that they would still persevere therein, and act it over again upon every opportunity."  “A Short Demurrer to the Jewes Long Discontinued Remitter into England” was written by this highly skilled agitator in his campaign to block Oliver Cromwell's plan to reopen England to the Jews.  They had been expelled for centuries but were anxious to come back - to the scene of their former 'persecutions.'  Prynne is credited with preventing Parliament from rescinding the explusion order of EDWARD I, although Cromwell accomplished his purpose by simply letting the Jews return,- and they are still in England illegally today.  Prynne's book offers a wealth of documentation on the causes of the original expulsion, which centered on a ritual murder controversy.  According to him, Jewish methods included 'Usuries and Deceits, clipping and falsifying monies, ingrossing all sorts of commodities into their hands, [and] usurping the Nations' trades."

****Jewish Emancipation - Although there is learned distrust of Jews among the Commoners, laxity for Jews in England is accomplished through 1) Protestant re-interest in biblical Israel and lessening of Catholic influence; 2) intermingling bloodlines with nobility; 3) Usage of Jews in finance and international finance for British Empire.  This follows through into the American English colonies.  Continental Europe continues with general distrust, but is also weakened through Napoleonic Jewish emancipation and consequent Jewish radical movements, Jewish Enlightenment and then Jewish/Russian Communist Revolution.

 The Chmielnicki (Khmelnytsky) Uprising of 1648-51

Bohdan Zynoviy Mykhailovych Khmelnytsky (c.1595 – 8/6, 1657) was a hetman of the Zaporozhian Cossack Hetmanate of Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (now Ukraine).  He led an uprising against the Commonwealth and its magnates (1648–1654) which resulted in the creation of a Cossack state.  In 1654, he concluded the Treaty of Pereyaslav with the Tsardom of Russia, which led to the eventual loss of independence to the Russian Empire.  Khmelnytsky was viewed as a national hero of Russia for bringing Ukraine into the "eternal union" of all Russias — Great, Little and White Russia.  The Cossacks were tired of Jewish ethics of Supremacy.  “Instinct always made the crowd, firstly preoccupied by its immediate material interests, oppose Jewish parasitism through popular movements, often times general and bloody, as it was among many others all over, e.g., the terrible movement of the Cossacks in the Ukraine led by Bogdan Hmelnischy in which over 250,000 Jews perished in 1649.”- Corneliu Codreanu  (Modern history says 20,000 perished.)  His rallying cry was: "Remember the insults of the Poles and the Jews, their favorite stewards and agents!"  One Ukrainian chronicle reveals that some noblemen assigned even the churches located on their lands to Jewish agents, so that their authorization-and high prices-were necessary before the people could perform their baptisms, weddings and funerals. (N. Kostomarov, Russian History)

The Chmielnicki (Khmelnytsky) Uprising of 1648-51 was destructive to the Jews.  In the wake of the rampages, the leading rabbis of Poland and the Ukraine decided that God was not taking care of his Chosen People because of their humor.  The "Elders of the Four Councils" in Vilna (present-day Lithuania) declared that, henceforth, there would be no more merrymaking during holidays, weddings, and the like.  No more jugglers.  No more rhyming singers.  The one form of "humor" they opted to spare was the "badhkin" -- something of a caustic, malevolent jester who peppered the victims of his humor with unspeakable insults.  By decree, the only type of Jewish humor deemed acceptable in Eastern Europe was coarse, scatological, insulting fare.  While the aggression of Jewish humor wasn't widely appreciated back in the old country, it built Hollywood.  Gordon points to a 1978 compendium that pegged 82 percent of the nation's top 400 comic performers as being Jewish.  These days, he notes, the percentage may even be higher.  "My father grew up in a shtetl, and he remembers the badhkin in his village," says Gordon. The so-called comedian was "a drunk, one-eyed guy living in the cemetery, who would come out on Purim and at weddings and tell really dirty jokes, usually about big tuchases, drooping breasts, or tiny penises."  Or, as the Chosen People call it -- TRADITION!

Number Inflation!: Some Jewish sources have claimed 2.4 to 3.3 million deaths during the Cossack rebellions even though there may have been as few as 50,000 Jews in the area in which the insurrection occurred.

1650         1650         1650         1650

 René Descartes (3/31, 1596 – 2/11, 1650) was a natural philosopher, and has been dubbed the "Father of Modern Philosophy".  His Meditations on First Philosophy continues to be a standard text at most university philosophy departments.  Descartes's influence in mathematics is also apparent; the Cartesian coordinate system—allowing geometric shapes to be expressed in algebraic equations—was named after him.  He is credited as the father of analytical geometry.  Descartes was also one of the key figures in the Scientific Revolution.  He was a devout Roman Catholic, claiming that one of the purposes of the Meditations was to defend the Christian faith.  He is said to have died from pneumonia.   The German philosopher Theodor Ebert asserts that Descartes died from an arsenic-laced communion wafer given to him by a Catholic priest.  He believes that Jacques Viogué, a missionary working in Stockholm, administered the poison because he feared Descartes's radical theological ideas would derail an expected conversion to Roman Catholicism by the monarch of Protestant Lutheran Sweden.  In 1663, the Pope placed his works on the Index of Prohibited Books.

   Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury (4/5, 1588 – 12/4, 1679) was an English philosopher, best known today for his work on political philosophy.  His 1651 book “Leviathan” established the foundation for most of Western political philosophy from the perspective of social contract theory.  Hobbes was a champion of absolutism for the sovereign but he also developed some of the fundamentals of European liberal thought: the right of the individual.  In Leviathan, Hobbes explicitly states that the sovereign has authority to assert power over matters of faith and doctrine, and that if he does not do so, he invites discord.  This presages the German Christians of the Third Reich.  Part I: Of Man; Part II: Of Common-wealth; Part III: Of a Christian Common-wealth; Of the Kingdom of Darkness. 

“Les Mazarinades” 17th c. French political pamphlets begun at the time of the Fronde controversy, when Anne of Austria and Cardinal Mazarin were opposed by the Paris citizenry and Parliament.  From this nominal issue, the pamphleteers quickly moved to the Jewish problem – even though there were officially supposed to be no Jews then living in France.  The specific cause of animosity was the murder, by the crypto-jewish fripiers (old clothes dealers), of a young Christian man.  The Mazarinades pamphlets were esteemed by a large proportion of the Paris common folk, and seem to have been - until their suppression - a true voice of the people.  Sample anti-Jewish rhetoric: “There is no one who does not know that the Jews are the opprobrium (disgrace) of all nations and have been so for sixteen hundred years and more.  Their customs show their malediction no less than their bondage.  There is no one who does not know that they have no other profession in life than usury, and that their false witnesses and their infamous practices have sown corruption the world over.” (Scrutiny of the Life of the Jews ... )  The Fronde (1648-1653) was a period of serious disorders that affect the kingdom of France during the minority of Louis XIV (1643-1661), then during the war with Spain (1635-1659).

Shalkowski , 17th c. Polish physician. In “Discovery of Israelite Betrayal” and “Clear evidence of the Doctors of Israel” he exposed alleged fraudulent and murderous practices of Jewish medicos.  Jewish apologists claim that he was professionally jealous of their superiority.

Clement Walker (died 1651) was an English lawyer, official and politician.  As a member of the Long Parliament, he became an outspoken critic of the conduct of its affairs, and allied himself to William Prynne.  With William Prynne, he was a staunch opponent of Cromwell's campaign to legalize the re-entry of Jews into England.  His Anarchia Anglicana provided a résumé of the Jewish situation in other European countries, as an object lesson as to why his own should continue to exclude Jews.

Alexander Ross (c. 1590–1654) was a prolific Scottish writer and controversialist.  He was Chaplain-in-Ordinary to Charles I.  He helped arouse public opinion against Cromwell's plan to readmit the Jews.  His View on the Jewish Religion (1652?) asserted that Jewish sects regularly stole children, circumcised and crucified them, in a rite supposedly essential to Jewish magic and mysticism.  Jewish life, he averred, "is filled with the keenest attention to evil spirits."

 Jews throughout Africa and the Americas: The Dutch East India Company controlled the Cape of South Africa from 1652 – 1795 and only permitted Protestant Christians to reside at the Cape despite the significant number of Jewish shareholders in the company.  Due to this, (Jew) Jacobson and (Jew) Hijlbron were baptized Christians on December 25, 1669, with records of these baptisms found in the registers of the Dutch Reformed Church.  This was in contrast to the Dutch West India Company, which sent two hundred Jews to colonize Brazil in 1642.  By 1880, there were about 4,000 Jews in South Africa. It is estimated that more than half of these were brought from Germany.  From 1880, Jewish immigration increased rapidly – in particular with the discovery of the diamond fields in Kimberley in 1869 and the goldfields in the Transvaal in 1886.  De Beers Diamond Company (later control passing to the German Jewish family of Ernest Oppenheimer with the assistance of the Rothschilds).  Over 47,000 Jews were enumerated in the first nationwide census of 1911.

 1654  Sept 22 Peter Stuyvesant (c. 1612 – Aug 1672), the Governor of New Amsterdam, sought to oust the Jews from his colony.  "The Jews who have arrived would nearly all like to remain here, but learning that they (with their customary usury and deceitful trading with the Christians) were very repugnant to the inferior magistrates, as also to the people having the most affection for you; the Deaconry also fearing that owing to their present indigence they might become a charge in the coming winter, we have, for the benefit of this weak newly developing place and land in general, deemed it useful to require them in a friendly way to depart; praying also most seriously in this connection, for ourselves also for the general community of your worships, that the deceitful race - such hateful enemies and blasphemers of the name of Christ - not be allowed further to infect and trouble this new colony. (Letter to the Amsterdam Chamber of the Dutch West India Company, from New Amsterdam, September 22, 1654.)

The Jews whom he attempted to oust merely applied to their fellow Jews in Holland, and the order came back from the Company countermanding the expulsion. (For a similar situation during the Civil War, see Ulysses Grant.  Among the reasons given by "their worships" for over-ruling their governor, one stands out rather glaringly, in view of the usual Jewish contention that their people were 'poor and persecuted:' " ...and also because of the large amount of capital which they have invested in shares of this Company." (Harry Golden and Martin Rywell, “The Jews in American History”

Rabbi Marc Lee Raphael “Jews and Judaism in the United States a Documentary History (1983), admits: During the sixteenth century, exiled from their Spanish homeland and hard-pressed to escape the clutches of the Inquisition, Spanish and Portuguese Jews fled to the Netherlands;… the Dutch enthusiastically welcomed these talented, skilled businessmen.  …While thriving in Amsterdam, they began to establish themselves in the Dutch and English colonies in the New World.  … The Jewish-Caribbean nexus provided Jews with the opportunity to claim a disproportionate influence in New World commerce….”

Baltasar Gracián y Morales, SJ (1/8, 1601 – 12/6, 1658) was a Spanish Jesuit and baroque prose writer.  Many of his works refer caustically to the Jews.  Gracian particularly assails pound-of-flesh usury and what he interpreted as a thirst for political power over non-Jews. See El Criticón, El Héroe, El Politico don Fernando el Catolico. 

“Saint George And The Dragon”, by Anglice Mercurius Poeticus.:  “The plague bawle you! Cries Harry Martin, /You have brought us to this condition, /You must be canting and be plagued, /With your Barebones petition, /And take in that bull-headed, splay-footed/Member of the circumcision,/That bacon-faced Jew, Corbet, /That son of perdition!”  Miles Corbet had sat upon the King in judgment.  In a satirical tract, one Tichbourn is made to say: “They say I am as notorious as Miles Corbet the Jew.  In the 1660 political tract The Private Debates Of The Rump, we read: “Call in the Jews, cryes Corbet, there is a certain sympathy, methinks, between them and me.  Those wandering pedlers and I were doubtless made of the same mould; they have all such blote-herring faces as myself, and the devil himself is in 'um for cruelty.  He was one of those who fled on the Restoration, but he was afterwards taken treacherously in Holland, and, being brought to London, was executed as a regicide. 

1660   Ashkenazi and Sephardic synagogues are built in London.

   Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (7/15 1606 – 10/4 1669) was a Dutch painter and etcher. He is generally considered one of the greatest painters and printmakers in European art history and the most important in Dutch history.  His contributions to art came in a period of great wealth and cultural achievement that historians call the Dutch Golden Age, when Dutch Golden Age painting, although in many ways antithetical to the Baroque style that dominated Europe, was extremely prolific and innovative.  Rembrandt's greatest creative triumphs are exemplified especially in his portraits of his contemporaries, self-portraits and illustrations of scenes from the Bible.  See Langbehn’s (Rembrandt as Teacher), 1890.  When Hitler looked at "Man with a Golden Helmet," he singled out the soldier's heroic features, "This proves that Rembrandt was a true Aryan and German.”   "Rembrandt's nation celebrates its greatest son not as a possession for itself alone, but as one of the greatest and most noble creations of the Germanic spirit," said Tobie Goedewaagen, a leading figure in the Dutch National Socialist movement which supported the Nazis, in 1941.  A 1941 film, made in Amsterdam, maintained Jews were the cause of Rembrandt's financial woes, claiming they bought his oil paintings cheaply and sold them for a huge profit. Rembrandt was declared bankrupt in 1656 and forced to leave his house in Amsterdam's most fashionable (Jewish)district for a more modest home.  "Rembrandt was in the mainstream Christian thinking of his time about Judaism, that Jews were outside of God's redemption."  He was ready to live amongst them but he did spend much time wrangling with them, he said.

 The Moneychanger by Rembrandt, 1627

 Blaise Pascal (6/19, 1623 – 8/19, 1662), was a French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer and Catholic philosopher.  Pascal's earliest work was in the natural and applied sciences where he made important contributions to the study of fluids, and clarified the concepts of pressure and vacuum by generalizing the work of Evangelista Torricelli.  Pascal also wrote in defense of the scientific method.  He was called a Jansenite (Calvinist) heretic by the Catholic Church.  In Thoughts, he wrote “Proofs of Jesus Christ”: ”There is no Redeemer for the Jews; they hope for Him in vain.  There is a Redeemer only for Christians. …..Either the Jews or the Christians must be wicked.   The Jews reject Him, but not all.  The saints receive Him, and not the carnal-minded.  ….Destruction of the Jews and heathen by Jesus Christ.”

Samuel Butler (2/8 1612 – 9/25 1680) was a poet and satirist, remembered now chiefly for a long satirical burlesque poem on Puritanism entitled Hudibras.

In “Hudibras”(1663), he refers here to the fact that the Jewish religion has a yearly rite, the Kol Nidre, in which members absolve themselves from all vows that they will make in the coming year. It was on the basis of this that Jews were commonly forbidden to stand as witnesses in European law courts. : “The Rabbins write, when any Jew/Did make to God or man a vow, /Which afterwards he found untoward/and stubborn to be kept, or too hard,/Any three other Jews o'the nation/Might free him from the obligation;/And have not two saints the power to use/A greater privilege than three Jews?” 

In “An Old Song On Oliver's Court”, Butler says:  “He that would a new courtier be/And of the late coyn'd gentry;/A brother of the prick-eared crew,/Half a presbyter, half a Jew,/When he is dipp'd in Jordan's flood,/And wash'd his hands in royal blood,/Let him to our court repair,/Where all trades and religions are…If he be one of the eating tribe,/Both a Pharisee and a Scribe,/And hath learn'd the snivelling tone/Of a flux'd devotion;/Cursing from his sweating tub/The Cavaliers to Beelzebub.” 

Butler also said this: “It has been said that though god cannot alter the past, historians can.” 

Samuel Pepys FRS, MP, JP, (2/23 1633 – 5/26 1703) was an English naval administrator and Member of Parliament who is now most famous for the diary he kept for a decade while still a relatively young man.  Although Pepys had no maritime experience, he rose by patronage, hard work and his talent for administration, to be the Chief Secretary to the Admiralty under both King Charles II and subsequently King James II.  His influence and reforms at the Admiralty were important in the early professionalization of the Royal Navy.  The detailed private diary Pepys kept from 1660 until 1669 was first published in the 19th century, and is one of the most important primary sources for the English Restoration period. It provides a combination of personal revelation and eyewitness accounts of great events, such as the Great Plague of London, the Second Dutch War and the Great Fire of London.  In the famous Diary (for October 13, 1663), he records his unfavorable impressions after attending a service in a synagogue. His criticisms have nothing to do with religious doctrine, but with Jewish psychology and group behavior, as he saw, it.  “But, Lord! to see the disorder, laughing, sporting, and no attention, but confusion in all their service, more like brutes than people knowing the true God, would make a man forswear ever seeing them more and indeed I never did see so much, or could have imagined there had been any religion in the whole world so absurdly performed as this. Away thence with my mind strongly disturbed with them…” (I’ve seen the same.)

Abraham Cowley (1618 – 7/28, 1667) was an English poet.  He opposed readmission of the Jews to England by Cromwell, the Jewish-financed dictator, because of what he regarded as their undesirable traits. (Discourse on Cromwell)

1667 Jews Expelled from Ukraine and from Russia in 1727, 1738, 1742.

                                                                                                                                                                                                           

 ****1668 - Sabbatai Zevi (säbätī` zā`vē), 1626–76, Jewish mystic and pseudo-Messiah, founder of the Sabbatean sect, he became deeply influenced by its ideas of imminent national redemption.  Zevi was a Cabbalist wonder-worker and in 1648 he proclaimed himself the Messiah and named the year 1666 as the millennium.  Many Christian millenialists also adopted this year.  Nearly one half of the Jewish world was swept up in the fervor, many selling their homes and businesses and relocating to the Holy Land in anticipation of the redemption.  Within Judaism, the Messiah was thought to be either wholly righteous or wholly debauch in taking the sins of the world upon himself.  Zevi took this route and swept most morality aside.  In 1668, while visiting Turkey, the Ottoman sultan forced him to choose between death and conversion to Islam and Shabbetai Zvi opted for the latter, at least outwardly.  Although most of his disciples abandoned him after his conversion, several thousand emulated their leader by outwardly accepting, though they continued to see themselves as Jews.  These Jews became Crypto within Islam and later in the 20th century were the nucleus of the Young Turk Movement which slaughtered the Christian Armenians.

 ****Freemasonry is a fraternal organization that arose from obscure origins in the late 16th to early 17th century.  Freemasonry now exists in various forms all over the world, with a membership estimated at around 5 million, including just under two million in the United States and around 480,000 in England, Scotland and Ireland.  The various forms all share moral and metaphysical ideals, which include, in most cases, a constitutional declaration of belief in a Supreme Being.  The fraternity is administratively organized into Grand Lodges or sometimes Orients, each of which governs its own jurisdiction, which consists of subordinate (or constituent) Lodges.  Grand Lodges recognize each other through a process of landmarks and regularity.  There are also appendant bodies, which are organizations related to the main branch of Freemasonry, but with their own independent administration.   Freemasonry uses the metaphors of operative stonemasons' tools and implements, against the allegorical backdrop of the building of King Solomon's Temple, to convey what has been described by both Masons and critics as "a system of morality veiled in allegory and illustrated by symbols."  There are Jewish and Muslim lodges.  Freemasonry has been considered similar to Judaic Secret Society by Roman Catholicism and Fascism, among others.

[I believe there was a difference between English and Continental Freemasonry, until about 1830, when Continental Freemasonry took over.]

“It is true, of course, that there were Jews connected with Freemasonry from its birth, students of the Kabbala, as is shown by certain rites which survive ...  In the years preceding the outbreak of the French Revolution, they entered in greater numbers than ever, into the councils of the secret societies, becoming, indeed, themselves the founders of secret associations.” Bernard Lazare – (Anti-Semitism, Its History and Causes)  “Jews have been most conspicuous in connection with FreeMasonry in France since the Revolution.” - The Jewish Encyclopedia. “Masonry is based on Judaism. Eliminate the teachings of Judaism from the Masonic ritual and what is left?”  - Jewish Tribune - New York, October 28, 1927.  “The technical language, symbolism, and rites of Masonry are full of Jewish ideas and terms.” - The Jewish Encyclopedia - Volume IV, page 503. 

“The spirit of Freemasonry is the spirit of Judaism in its most fundamental beliefs; it is its ideas, its language, it is mostly its organization.  The hope which enlightens and supports Freemasonry is the hope which enlightens and supports Israel.  Its crowning will be that wonderful prayer-house of which Jerusalem will be the triumphal centre and symbol.” - La Verite Israelite - 1891.  “Masonry is a Jewish institution, whose history, degrees, charges, passwords, and explanations are Jewish from the beginning to the end, with the exception of only one by-degree and a few words in the obligation.”  - Dr. Isaac M. Wise - in “The Israelite”,  August 3, 1855.  “Each Lodge is and must be a symbol of the Jewish Temple; each Master in the Chair, a representative of the Jewish King; and every Mason a personification of the Jewish workman.”  - An Encyclopedia of European Freemasonry - (Philadelphia, 1906).

“The Jews have had full confidence in the continuation of their domination and count above all on the precious co-operation of Freemasonry and Socialism.”  F. Trocase – “Jewish Austria”

“The Judeo-Masonic Peril is a question of life or death for all nations.” Monsignor E. Jouin – “Revue Internat, des Societes Secretes”.

“Besides the existence of the Cabalistic element in Masonic morals and dogma, there are numerous other indications which point to the important influence of Judaism on the early formation and development of Freemasonry.  We mention a few.  The Masonic coat-of-arms still used by the Grand Lodge of England is of Jewish design.  Some of the more important legends of Freemasonry, especially the legend of Hiram, on which much of Masonic rite is founded, are Jewish... Approved Jewish writers generally recognize that practically the whole Masonic ritual is of Jewish origin...

It was the Jews that introduced Freemasonry into the United States of America; and Jews have always been a powerful influence in American Masonic Organizations.”  Rev. E. Cahill- “Freemasonry and the Anti-Christian Movement”, pages 83-84.

“The Freemasons are the henchmen of the Jews.” General Ludendorf - quoted in Masonic Journal “Latomia”, February 1928.  

“Masonry, that immense association, the rare initiates of which, that is to say, the real chiefs of which, whom we must be careful not to confound with the nominal chiefs, live in a strict and intimate alliance with the militant members of Judaism, princes and imitators of the high cabal.  For that elite of the order - these real chiefs whom so few of the initiated know, or whom they only know for the most part under a nom de guerre, are employed in the profitable and secret dependence of the cabalistic Israelites.  And this phenomenon is accomplished, thanks to the habits of rigorous discretion to which they subject themselves by oaths and terrible menaces; thanks also to the majority of Jewish members which the mysterious constitution of Masonry seats in its sovereign counsel.  “The modern cult called Judaism (more properly called Pharisaism) has two esoteric movements within the movement.  One is Talmudism; the other is Cabalism; the former is anti-Christ while the other is pro-Lucifer (a fine distinction but an important one.)” - Gougennot de Mousseaux – “la Juif, La Judaisme et la Judaisation des Peuples Chretiens”.

“Judaism itself is a kind of Freemasonry, owing to the national solidarity of the Jews, their cosmopolitanism, which sets the Jews free from all local and patriotic ties, and finally, the opposition of the Jews to Christianity.” -Rev. N. Deschamps – “Les Societes Secretes Et La Societe”.

“The Masonic Lodge at Milan announced in a circular dated July 30, 1914, that the object of the Lodges was to introduce an age free from thrones and altars.  That is to say the overthrow of all princes and the removal of all non-Jewish religions.  Jewdom has been working at this task - openly and in secret - for decades.  And they have nearly succeeded in their purpose.” -F. Roederich-Stoltheim - The Riddle of the Jews Success.

“It was the Jews that introduced Freemasonry into the United States of America; and the Jews have always been a powerful influence in the American Masonic organization.” -Monsignor E. Jouin (1844-1932)

“The chief danger in all these secret societies of today, as of yesterday, is that they are ruled and influenced by an invisible hierarchy, which cannot be more closely defined than as composed of Cabalistic Jews.  The visible societies train and orient, physically, mentally and astrally, instruments or mediums to be used at will by this hidden centre.”  Inquire Within - Light - Bearers of Darkness, page 159

“In Russia in 1929 every Mason who was not Jewish was killed along with his family. (Carefully peruse The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion.) - Alexey Jefimow (Who are the Rulers of Russia?”).

Heinrich Schütz (10/8, 1585 – 11/6, 1672) was a German composer and organist, generally regarded as the most important German composer before Johann Sebastian Bach.  His best known works are in the field of sacred music.  Representative works include his three books of Symphoniae sacrae, the Psalms of David, the (the Seven Last Words on the Cross) and his three Passion settings.

Johann Christoph Wagenseil (11/26, 1633-10/9, 1705) was a German Christian Hebraist.   For his knowledge of Hebrew he was chiefly indebted to the Sabbatean Behr Perlhefter and Enoch Levi, who had come from Vienna to Fürth about 1670.  Wagenseil devoted his learning to publishing anti-Christian works of Jewish authors, and undertook long journeys to gather his material.  Becoming convinced by the Toledot Yeshu that the Jews were guilty of blaspheming Jesus, Wagenseil addressed to all high potentates his Denunciatio Christiana de Blasphemiis Judæorum in Jesum Christum (Altdorf, 1703), in which he implored them to restrain the Jews from mocking at Jesus, Mary, the cross, the mass, and Christian teachings.  Although he would have been pleased to see the Protestant princes show greater zeal in the conversion of the Jews, Wagenseil was opposed to forcible baptism and similar measures, and devoted a special treatise to the refutation of the charge of ritual murder.

 “Simplicius Simplicissimus” (1668) is a picaresque novel of the Baroque style, by Grimmelshausen.  Inspired by the events and horrors of the Thirty Years' War which had devastated Germany from 1618 to 1648, it is regarded as the first adventure novel in the German language and the first German novel masterpiece.  Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen (1621 – 8/17, 1676) was a German author.

1670  Jews, who had settled in Austria since 1420 expelled.

The Hudson's Bay Company is the oldest commercial corporation in North America and one of the oldest in the world. The company was incorporated by British royal charter in 1670. 

 Molière (Jean-Baptiste Poquelin), (1/15, 1622 – 2/17, 1673) was a French playwright and actor who is considered to be one of the greatest masters of comedy in Western literature.  Among his best-known works are (The Misanthrope), (The School for Wives), (Tartuffe or the Hypocrite), (The Miser), (The Imaginary Invalid), and (The Bourgeois Gentleman.  His works embody the traditional French literary image of Jews as grasping and criminal.  Cléante, an obvious symbolical figure for France itself, is squeezed between a miserly father and an unscrupulous Jewish usurer named Simon, in L'Avare. 

  John Milton (12/9, 1608 – 11/8, 1674) was an English poet, polemicist, and civil servant for the Commonwealth of England.  He is best known for his epic poem “Paradise Lost”.  The poem concerns the Christian story of the Fall of Man: the temptation of Adam and Eve by the fallen angel Satan and their expulsion from the Garden of Eden.  Milton's purpose, stated in Book I, is to "justify the ways of God to men" and elucidate the conflict between God's eternal foresight and free will.  Milton incorporates Paganism, classical Greek references, and Christianity within the poem.   “Paradise Regained” is a poem which deals with the subject of the Temptation of Christ.   Milton sets out to reverse the "loss" of Paradise. Thus, antonyms are often found next to each other throughout the poem, reinforcing the idea that everything that was lost in the first epic is going to be regained by the end of the mini-epic.  Paradise Regained expresses Milton's continuing belief in the promise of Christian salvation through Jesus Christ.  Milton is ambivalent about the Jews.  The suffering Jew who endures the Babylonian captivity and remains faithful to his God is a model for God's Englishman.  The literalist, surface-loving Jew - the outer Jew - exemplifies the idolatrous materialism that links him with the Turk and with Asian cybarites.  Much of what has become Christian mythology about Adam and Eve, Satan and the fallen angels, and the archangel Michael and his loyal angels comes from Paradise Lost by John Milton.

“Areopagitica: A speech of Mr. John Milton for the liberty of unlicensed printing to the Parliament of England” is a 1644 prose polemical tract by author John Milton against censorship.  Areopagitica is among history's most influential and impassioned philosophical defenses of the principle of a right to freedom of speech and expression, which was written in opposition to licensing and censorship and one of the most eloquent defenses of press freedom ever written.

In 1674, Fray Francisco de Torrejoncillo, wrote "Sentinel against Jews", highly appreciated and widely circulated in his time.  It was aimed at the Marranos who it was said had invaded all the civil and religious offices.  It consisted of fourteen books and showed that the Jews were presumptuous and liars.  “There is no evil that the Jews do not desire, as they wait for their messiah. . . . To be enemies of Christians, of Christ, and of his Divine Law, it is not necessary to be of a Jewish father and mother. One alone suffices.”  “Christian children must not “be suckled by Jewish vileness because that milk, being of infected persons, can only engender perverse inclinations.”

Icelandic Hallgrímur Pétursson (1616-1674) wrote one of the hymns repeated in the days leading up to Easter includes the lines, “The righteous Law of Moses  The Jews here misapplied,  Which their deceit exposes,  Their hatred and their pride.  The judgement is the Lord's.  When by falsification  The foe makes accusation,  It's His to make awards.”

John III Sobieski (8/17, 1629 – 6/17, 1696) reigned as Monarch of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth from 1674.  His reign was a period of the Commonwealth's stabilization, much needed after the turmoil of the Deluge and Khmelnytsky Uprising.  Popular among his subjects, he was an able military commander, most famous for the victory over the Turks in the 1683 Battle of Vienna.  Following his victories over the Ottoman Empire, he was called by the Turks the "Lion of Lechistan" and held as the savior of European Christendom by the pope.

Giulio Bartolocci (April 1, 1613 – October 19, 1687) was an Italian Cistercian Hebrew scholar and author of the four volume Bibliotheca Magna Rabbinica.  He was born at Celleno and became the pupil of a baptized Jew, Giovanni Battista, who instructed him in Hebrew.  On completing his studies, Bartolocci entered the Cistercian order.  It was from Battista that Bartolocci obtained his knowledge of Hebrew and rabbinical literature.   In 1675 he began in Rome the publication of Bibliotheca Magna Rabbinica, a bibliography, in Latin and Hebrew, of Hebrew literature, arranged according to the names of the authors.  This work appeared in four folio volumes, 1675-1693, three of which were published by the author and the fourth by Carlo Giuseppi Imbonati, his disciple.  Imbonati's supplement contained a list of authors arranged according to the subjects on which they wrote.  The latter added to this work a fifth volume, the Bibliotheca Latina Hebraica, Rome, 1694, which contained the works and the names of Christian authors who had written in Latin on Jews and Judaism.  It was the first attempt on a large scale to give to the world an account of the literature of the Jews.  It is not a mere bibliographic and biographic compilation, but contains also a number of dissertations on Jewish customs, observances, and religious ideas; on the River Sambation, on the beginnings of Hebrew typography, and the like.

 Paul Gerhardt (3/12, 1607 – 5/27, 1676) was a German hymn writer.  He also sponsored a series of conferences between the Lutheran and Reformed clergy in the hopes of having them arrive at some consensus.  Gerhardt is considered Germany's greatest hymn writer.

 1677 Baruch or Benedict de Spinoza (11/24, 1632 – 2/21, 1677) was a Dutch philosopher of Portuguese Jewish origin.   “As to their continuance so long after dispersion, there is nothing marvelous in it, for they separated themselves from every nation as to draw upon themselves universal hate.”  “The love of the Hebrews for their country was not only patriotism but also piety, and was cherished and nurtured by daily rites until, like their hatred of other nations, it was absolutely perverse (as it very well might be, considering that they were a peculiar people and entirely apart from the rest).  Such daily reprobation naturally gave rise to a lasting hatred, deeply implanted in the heart: for of all hatred, none is more deep and tenacious than that which springs from extreme devoutness or piety, and is itself cherished as pious.”  (Tractatus theologico-politicus)  

1679 "Oh du lieber Augustin" ("Oh, you dear Augustin") is a German Folk Song from 1679.  Refrain: O, you dear Augustin, Augustin, Augustin, O, you dear Augustin, All is lost! / 1. Money's gone, girlfriend's gone, All is lost, Augustin! O, you dear Augustin, All is lost!  Refrain / 2. Coat is gone, staff is gone, Augustin lies in the dirt. O, you dear Augustin, All is lost! Refrain / 3. Even that rich town Vienna, Broke is like Augustin; Shed tears with thoughts akin, All is lost!  Refrain / 4. Every day was a feast, Now we just have the plague! Just a great corpse's feast, That is the rest.  Refrain / 5. Augustin, Augustin, Lay down in your grave! O, you dear Augustin, All is lost!

 George Fox (July 1624 – 1/13, 1691) was an English Dissenter and a founder of the Religious Society of Friends, commonly known as the Quakers or Friends.  Quakers interpreted New Testament portrayals of Jews as evidence of an essential opposition between Jews and Christ.  He argues that the “pride” and “hypocrisy” of the Pharisees were inseparable from their actions.  “For the Jewes which had the letter, persecuted Jesus Christ the Substance”. 

****The Religious Society of Friends or Quakers describes a range of independent religious organizations which all trace their origins to a Christian movement in mid-17th century England and Wales.  A central tenet was that ordinary people could have a direct experience of the eternal Christ, particularly as a teacher and guide.  Today, the theological beliefs among the different organizations vary, but include broadly evangelical Christian, Orthodox Christian, liberal Protestant, Christian universalist and non-Christian universalist beliefs.  Within some groups, Friends meet for silent worship with no leader and no fixed program, where they await spiritual guidance directly from God.  In other groups, Friends meet for services led by a pastor with readings and hymns.  Some branches of the Religious Society of Friends are known to the general public today for testifying to their religious beliefs by refusing to participate in wars, and by social action, for instance on behalf of the environment and equal rights for all.  In the past they were known for wearing particular clothing (plain dress); by using outdated modes of speech (thee and thou); and by refusing to swear oaths.  Quakers have been philo-Semites through a history together of non-conformism, wide variety of theological beliefs and multi-culturalism.  This denomination with its emphasis on personal spirituality as opposed to taught doctrine may have been heavily infiltrated by ‘dishonest’ or Crypto-Jews.

Sir Thomas Browne (10/19, 1605 – 10/19, 1682) was an English author of varied works which disclose his wide learning in diverse fields including medicine, religion, science and the esoteric.  Browne's writings display a deep curiosity towards the natural world, influenced by the scientific revolution of Baconian enquiry.  A consummate literary craftsman, Browne's works are permeated by frequent reference to Classical and Biblical sources.  He spoke of Jews as “That contemptible and degenerate issue of Jacob.” And “That the Jews stink naturally, that is, that in their race and nation there is an evil savour….”

 1683 Battle of Vienna - Muslims reach the gates of Vienna again.  The army of the Holy Roman Empire led by Polish King decisively defeated a large Turkish army, ending the western colonial Ottoman advance.  The HRE army was half Polish/Lithuanian Commonwealth forces, mostly cavalry, and half Holy Roman Empire forces (German/Austrian), mostly infantry. 

Anthony Ashley Cooper, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury PC (7/22 1621 – 1/21 1683), was a prominent English politician during the Interregnum and during the reign of King Charles II and British philanthropist.  He wrote that it would be tempting to laugh at Jews for their grotesque life-style, if they were not so willing and able to do harm. (Characteristics of Men ... )

 Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (7/1, 1646 – 11/14, 1716) was a German mathematician and philosopher. He became one of the most prolific inventors in the field of mechanical calculators.  While working on adding automatic multiplication and division to Pascal's calculator, he was the first to describe a pinwheel calculator in 1685 and invented the Leibniz wheel, used in the arithmometer, the first mass-produced mechanical calculator.  He also refined the binary number system, which is at the foundation of virtually all digital computers.

**John Bunyan (11/28, 1628 – 8/31, 1688) was an English Christian writer and preacher, famous for writing “The Pilgrim's Progress”.  Though he was a Reformed Baptist, in the Church of England, he is remembered with a Lesser Festival on 30 August.  “The Pilgrim's Progress from This World to That Which Is to Come” is a Christian allegory written by John Bunyan and published in February, 1678.  It is regarded as one of the most significant works of English literature. 

The explicit Protestant theology of The Pilgrim's Progress made it much more popular than its predecessors.  Bunyan's gifts and plain style breathe life into the abstractions of the anthropomorphized temptations and abstractions that Christian encounters and with whom he converses on his course to Heaven.  Samuel Johnson said that "this is the great merit of the book, that the most cultivated man cannot find anything to praise more highly, and the child knows nothing more amusing."  Three years after its publication (1681), it was reprinted in colonial America, and was widely read in the Puritan colonies.  Because of its explicit English Protestant theology, The Pilgrim's Progress shares the then popular English antipathy toward the Roman Catholic Church.  It was published over the years of the Popish Plot (1678–1681) and ten years before the Glorious Revolution of 1688, and it shows the influence of John Foxe's Acts and Monuments.  Bunyan presents a decrepit and harmless giant to confront Christian at the end of the Valley of the Shadow of Death that is explicitly named "Pope".

Christian, an everyman character, journeys from the "City of Destruction" ("this world"), to the "Celestial City" (Heaven).   Christian is weighed down by a great burden.  He meets Evangelist, who directs him.  Obstinate and Pliable go after Christian to bring him back, but Christian refuses. Obstinate returns disgusted, but Pliable is persuaded to go with Christian.  Pliable's journey with Christian is cut short when the two of them fall into the Slough of Despond.  Christian is pulled out by Help.  Christian is diverted by Mr. Worldly Wiseman into seeking deliverance from his burden through the Law, supposedly with the help of a Mr. Legality and his son Civility in the village of Morality.  Evangelist meets the wayward Christian as he stops before Mount Sinai on the way to Legality's home.  At the Wicket Gate begins the "straight and narrow" King's Highway, and Christian is directed onto it by the gatekeeper Good Will.  In the Second Part, Good-will is shown to be Jesus himself.  To Christian's query about relief from his burden, Good Will directs him forward to "the place of deliverance." Christian loses his burden.  Atop the Hill of Difficulty, Christian makes his first stop for the night at the House Beautiful, and leaves clothed with armor which stands him in good stead in his battle against Apollyon in the Valley of Humiliation.  As night falls Christian enters the Valley of the Shadow of Death.  As he leaves this valley the sun rises on a new day.

Just outside the Valley of the Shadow of Death he meets Faithful, also a former resident of the City of Destruction, who accompanies him to Vanity Fair, where both are arrested.  Faithful is put on trial, and executed as a martyr.  Hopeful, a resident of Vanity, takes Faithful's place to be Christian's companion for the rest of the way.  Along a rough stretch of road, Christian and Hopeful leave the highway to travel on the easier By-Path Meadow, where a rainstorm forces them to spend the night.  In the morning they are captured by Giant Despair, who takes them to his Doubting Castle, where they are imprisoned, beaten and starved.  The giant wants them to commit suicide, but they endure the ordeal until Christian realizes that a key he has, called Promise, will open all the doors and gates of Doubting Castle.  Using the key, they escape.

The Delectable Mountains form the next stage of Christian and Hopeful's journey, where the shepherds show them some of the wonders of the place also known as "Immanuel's Land".   On the way, they meet a lad named Ignorance, who believes that he will be allowed into the Celestial City through his own good deeds rather than as a gift of God's grace.  Christian and Hopeful make it through the dangerous Enchanted Ground into the Land of Beulah, where they ready themselves to cross the River of Death on foot to Mount Zion and the Celestial City.  Christian has a rough time of it, but Hopeful helps him over; and they are welcomed into the Celestial City.

1688                                                                               

The Glorious Revolution occurs in Britain.  King James II, a Catholic, is removed from the throne by the Parliament and replaced with the Protestant King William III (William of Orange) of Holland and his British wife Queen Mary.  When the King fathered a son, the prospect of a Roman Catholic dynasty was now likely.  Already troubled by the King's Catholicism and his close ties with France, Parliament together invited William.   It can be argued that James's overthrow began modern English parliamentary democracy: never since has the monarch held absolute power, and the Bill of Rights has become one of the most important documents in the political history of Britain.  Catholics were denied the right to vote and sit in the Westminster Parliament for over 100 years afterwards.  They were also denied commissions in the army; and the monarch was forbidden to be Catholic or marry a Catholic, thus ensuring a Protestant succession.  The personal union and the co-operation between the English and Dutch navies shifted the dominance in world trade from the Dutch to England. 

William III (11/14, 1650 – 3/8, 1702) was a sovereign Prince of Orange by birth.  From 1672 he governed as Stadtholder William III of Orange over Holland, Zeeland, Utrecht, Guelders, and Overijssel of the Dutch Republic.  From 1689 he reigned as William III over England and Ireland, and as William II over Scotland.  He is informally known in Northern Ireland and Scotland as "King Billy".   A member of the House of Orange-Nassau, William won the English, Scottish, and Irish crowns following the Glorious Revolution, in which his uncle and father-in-law James II was deposed.  Today in America, St. Patrick’s Day is celebrated wearing green, but a century ago, Protestants still wore Orange, from William of Orange.

Pope Alexander VIII (4/22, 1610 – 2/1, 1691), born Pietro Vito Ottoboni, was Pope from 1689 to 1691.  He condemned Jewish/Talmudic genocidal writings.

 John Locke (8/29, 1632 – 10/28, 1704), widely known as the Father of Liberalism, was an English philosopher and physician regarded as one of the most influential of Enlightenment thinkers.  He is equally important to social contract theory.  His work had a great impact upon the development of epistemology and political philosophy.  His writings influenced Voltaire and Rousseau, many Scottish Enlightenment thinkers, as well as the American revolutionaries.  His contributions to classical republicanism and liberal theory are reflected in the American Declaration of Independence.  Locke was the first to define the self through a continuity of consciousness.  He postulated that the mind was a blank slate or tabula rasa.  Contrary to pre-existing Cartesian philosophy, he maintained that we are born without innate ideas, and that knowledge is instead determined only by experience derived from sense perception. 

After his Letter of Toleration (1689) Locke's attitude towards the Jews shifted away from a secular call for them to be tolerated and naturalized to the evangelical hope of converting them to Christianity and ‘restoring’' them to Palestine. (The final solution?)  He added that although he accepted non-Christians in the Christian state, he did not approve of their religions.  Locke acknowledged how harshly his compatriots viewed the Jews, but this harshness did not bother him as long as it did not lead to treatment more restrictive than that accorded other dissenters.   Locke's chief concern was for stability: toleration, he concluded, was not a matter of religious breadth but of political feasibility.

 1694   The Bank of England is established.  The creation of the Bank of England is a result of Cromwell's decision to ignore the law banning the Jews from entering England, and allowing them back in defiance of the law.  Only thirty-three years later (since 1655), a Dutch Prince arrived from Amsterdam surrounded by a whole swarm of Jews from that Jewish financial centre.  Driving his royal father-in-law out of the kingdom, he graciously consented to ascend the throne of Britain.  A very natural result following on this event was the inauguration of the National Debt by the establishment six years later of the Bank of England for the purpose of lending money to the Crown.  Britain had paid her way as she went until the Jew arrived."  1694: The name "Bank of England" deceptively gives the impression it is controlled by the Government of England when in fact it is a private institution founded under Jewish influence and controlled by Jews. 

 

****The City of London is a small area within Greater London, England.  The Corporation is headed by the Lord Mayor of the City of London, a separate (and much older) office to the Mayor of London.  The City is today a major business and financial centre, ranking on a par with New York City as the leading centre of global finance; in the 19th century, the City served as the world's primary business centre.  Greater London is a local government area which includes 32 London boroughs as well as the City of London, which is not one of the 32 London boroughs.  The local authority for the City, the City of London Corporation, is UNIQUE in the United Kingdom, and has some unusual responsibilities for a local authority in Britain, such as being the police authority for the City.  It also has responsibilities and ownerships beyond the City's boundaries. The City is today a major business and financial centre, ranking on a par with New York City as the leading centre of global finance.  The City has a resident population of approximately 8,000, but around 320,000 people work there, mainly in the financial services sector.  The legal profession form a major component of the western side of the City, especially in the Temple and Chancery Lane areas; these are where the Inns of Court are located, of which two — Inner Temple and Middle Temple — fall within the City of London boundary.  [Every Barrister belongs to an Inn of Court.  Over the centuries the number of active Inns of Court was reduced to the present four: Gray's Inn ; Lincoln's Inn ; The Inner Temple ; The Middle Temple.]  The City of London has a unique political status, a legacy of its uninterrupted integrity as a corporate city since the Anglo-Saxon period and its singular relationship with the Crown.  Historically its system of government was not unusual, but it was not reformed by the Municipal Reform Act 1835 and little changed by later reforms.

A Committee of 12 men rule The Jewish Vatican.  They are known as “The Crown.”  The City and its rulers, The Crown, are not subject to the Parliament.  They are a Sovereign State within a State.  The City is the financial hub of the world.  It is here that the Rothschilds have their base of operations and their centrality of control: * The Central Bank of England (controlled by the Rothschilds) is located in The City.  * All major British banks have their main offices in The City.  * 385 foreign banks are located in The City.  * 70 banks from the United States are located in The City.  London Stock Exchange is located in The City.  * Lloyd’s of London is located in The City.  * The Baltic Exchange (shipping contracts) is located in The City.  * Fleet Street (newspapers & publishing) is located in The City.  * The London Metal Exchange is located in The City. * The London Commodity Exchange (trading rubber, wool, sugar, coffee) is located in The City.

The French Academy.  The first five editions of the great “Dictionary of the French Academy” (1694 through 1822) define Juif as "a man who lends money at usurious interest, or sells at extraordinarily high prices: This is a Jew: “he lends at fifteen per-cent.  This merchant is a real Jew. it is applied, in familiar use, to all those who show great greed for money and eagerness to make it. . ."

John Dryden (8/9, 1631 – 5/12, 1700) was an influential English poet, literary critic, translator, and playwright who dominated the literary life of Restoration.   From: Absalom and Achitophel (1681): "The Jews, a headstrong, moody, murm'ring race, As ever tri'd th'extent and stretch of grace; God's pamper'd people whom, debauch'd with ease, No king could govern, nor no God could please.”  The play, Love Triumphant (1694), treats of Sancho, a conceited fool and apostate Jew.

John Toland (11/30, 1670 – 3/11, 1722) was a rationalist philosopher and freethinker, and occasional satirist, who wrote numerous books and pamphlets on political philosophy and philosophy of religion, which are early expressions of the philosophy of the Age of Enlightenment. He was influenced by the philosophy of John Locke.  In Toland's first book “Christianity Not Mysterious” (1696), he argued that the divine revelation of the Bible contains no true mysteries; rather, all the dogmas of the faith can be understood and demonstrated by properly trained reason from natural principles.

John Toland was the first person called a freethinker (by Bishop Berkeley) and went on to write over a hundred books in various domains but mostly dedicated to criticizing ecclesiastical institutions.  A great deal of his intellectual activity was dedicated to writing political tracts in support of the Whig cause.  Toland's views became gradually more radical.  His opposition to hierarchy in the church also led to opposition to hierarchy in the state; bishops and kings, in other words, were as bad as each other, and monarchy had no God-given sanction as a form of government.  For Toland, reason and tolerance were the twin pillars of the good society.  This was Whiggism at its most intellectually refined, the very antithesis of the Tory belief in sacred authority in both church and state.  Toland's belief in the need for perfect equality among free-born citizens was extended to the Jewish community, tolerated, but still outsiders in early eighteenth century England.  In his 1714 “Reasons for Naturalising the Jews” he was the first to advocate full citizenship and equal rights for Jewish people.

He also produced some highly controversial polemics, including the “Treatise of the Three Impostors”, in which Christianity, Judaism and Islam are all condemned as the three great political frauds.  The Treatise of the Three Imposters was rumored to exist in manuscript form since the Middle Ages and excoriated throughout all of Europe.  It is now thought that the work did not exist and he had created it.  Still, in Christianity not Mysterious, the book for which he is best known, Toland laid down a challenge not just to the authority of the established church, but to all inherited and unquestioned authority.  Of his influence, humanities professor Robert Pattison wrote: "Two centuries earlier the establishment would have burned him as a heretic; two centuries later it would have made him a professor of comparative religion in a California university.  In the rational Protestant climate of early eighteenth-century Britain, he was merely ignored to death."

Charles Perrault (1/12, 1628 – 5/16, 1703) was a French author and member of the Académie française.  He laid the foundations for a new literary genre, the fairy tale, with his works derived from pre-existing folk tales. The best known of his tales include (Little Red Riding Hood), (Cinderella), (Puss in Boots), Beauty and the Beast, Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty and (Bluebeard).  Many of Perrault's stories were rewritten by the Brothers Grimm.  In 1697 he published Tales and Stories of the Past with Morals subtitled Tales of Mother Goose.  He translated the Fabulae Centum (100 Fables) of the Latin poet Gabriele Faerno into French verse in 1699.

 1697 "Bluebeard" is a French literary folktale written by Charles Perrault.  The tale tells the story of a violent nobleman in the habit of murdering his wives and the attempts of one wife to avoid the fate of her predecessors.  Bluebeard is an immensely wealthy aristocrat, feared and shunned because of his "frightfully ugly" blue beard.  He has been married several times, but no one knows what became of his wives.  He is therefore avoided by the local girls.  When Bluebeard visits one of his neighbors and asks to marry one of her two daughters, the girls are terrified, and each tries to pass him on to the other.  Eventually he persuades the younger daughter to visit him, and after hosting a wonderful banquet, he convinces her to marry him.  After the ceremony she goes to live with him in his château.  Very shortly after, Bluebeard announces that he must leave the country for a while; he gives all the keys of the château to his new wife, telling her they open the doors to rooms which contain his treasures. He tells her to use the keys freely, and enjoy herself whilst he is away.  However, he also gives her the key to one small room beneath the castle, stressing to her that she must not enter this room under any circumstances.  She vows she will never enter the room.  He then goes away and leaves the house in her hands.  Immediately she is overcome with the desire to see what the forbidden room holds, and despite warnings from her visiting sister, Anne, the girl abandons her guests during a house party, and takes the key to the room.

The wife immediately discovers the room's horrible secret: its floor is awash with blood, and the murdered bodies of her husband's former wives hang from hooks on the walls.  Horrified, she drops the key into the pool of blood.  She flees the room, but the blood staining the key will not wash off.  She reveals her murderous husband's secret to her sister Anne, and both plan to flee the castle the next day.  But Bluebeard returns home unexpectedly the next morning, and, noticing the blood on the key, immediately knows his wife has broken her vow.  In a blind rage he threatens to behead her on the spot, but she implores him to give her a quarter of an hour to say her prayers. He consents, so she locks herself in the highest tower with Anne.  While Bluebeard, sword in hand, tries to break down the door, the sisters wait for their two brothers to arrive.  At the last moment, as Bluebeard is about to deliver the fatal blow, the brothers break into the castle, and as he attempts to flee, they kill him.  He leaves no heirs but his wife, who inherits all his great fortune.  She uses part of it for a dowry to marry off her sister, another part for her brothers' captains commissions, and the rest to marry a worthy gentleman who makes her forget her horrible encounter with Bluebeard. (not Blackbeard, the pirate.)

Ned Ward (Edward Ward) (1660 or 1667 – 6/20, 1731), was a satirical writer.  His most famous work is “The London Spy” (1698) is full of scathing references to Jews, as well as others whom the author regarded as being up to no good.  Ward was a pioneer muckraking journalist, delving into clubs, conspiracies, secret societies and all the shadowy financial activities.

Richard Simon (5/13 1638 – 4/11 1712) was a French Oratorian, influential advanced biblical critic, orientalist, and controversialist.  His career offers an interesting example of a well-meaning liberal who took an interest in Jewish matters and then went on to become a vocal partisan of the Jews in their ongoing difficulties with his own native people.  Simon praised the piety, charity and studiousness of the Jews.  But somewhere along the way, things went sour and we find Simon writing: “I confess to you that I did not know [the Jews] well enough when I gave to the public in our language the little book by Leon of Modena touching on their ceremonies.  I have spoken too much good of that miserable nation in my preface, as I realized subsequently from the dealings I have had with several of them.  They hate us mortally. (Letter to J.H.)

 **“Jews in southeastern Poland... were legally on par with the nobles with regard to the amounts paid as indemnification for being wounded or killed. If we go beyond formality and consider the prevailing practice the position of the Jew appears in a more favorable light.  If he could not be nobleman, he could be like one, or in the place of one.  Jewish lessees of the king's or nobles' villages and towns, or of various taxes and other sources of revenue, were accorded broad powers and status-bearing functions, often over large expanses populated by many people, not all of them peasants.  To these Jews were transformed almost Lord's power, mostly including the perquisites of local justice.

“A number of Jews actually did behave like nobles, conducting themselves haughtily, arrogantly, arbitrarily, dictatorially, and sometimes even recklessly... A number of cases are known in which a non-Jewish tax collector, or nobleman, or a court usher, was simply afraid to enter the houses of prominent Jews on business, not wanting to risk being thrown out or beaten up... Many... instances are known in which Polish Jewish communities or other groups refused to follow Polish court summonses or orders from other offices…Wealthy Jews with good connections among those in power, and on one hand, underworld elements, believed in their own ability to take care of themselves, or to invoke the protection of the powerful.  They frequently resorted to hard and brutal measures to achieve their ends...

“The toll farmer had many opportunities to practice abuse.  Rates were not clearly fixed.  The toll farmer and his employees had the right to search traveler’s wagons to confiscate the wares of anyone trying to avoid payment of tolls... Those who thought they had been overcharged tended to regard this as Jewish oppression…There are also cases in which failure to repay the loan punctually caused the amount of the loan to be raised to five times the original sum.  In some cases tardy borrowers were jailed, and on many occasions their real estate and villages were foreclosed and taken over by the Jewish lenders.  The debtors' natural resentment of his creditors was increased when homeowner and property owners saw their properties foreclosed…- “The Jews of Poland. A Social and Economic History of the Jewish Community in Poland from 1100 to 1800”(1976) by Bernard Dov Weinryb

 Philipp Jakob Spener (1/13, 1635– 2/5, 1705) was a German Christian theologian known as the "Father of Pietism" from his work “Pia Desideria”.

 August Hermann Francke (3/22, 1663– 6/8, 1727) was a German Lutheran clergyman, philanthropist, and Biblical scholar.  With the approval and encouragement of Philipp Jakob Spener, he founded the Collegium Philobiblicum, at which a number of graduates met regularly for the systematic study of the Bible, philologically and practically.  He had a sense of his responsibility towards the numerous outcast children who were growing up around him in ignorance and crime.  In 1695, he instituted what is often called a "ragged school," supported by public charity.  In 1698 there were 100 orphans under his charge to be clothed and fed, besides 500 children who were taught as day scholars.  The schools grew in importance and were later known as the Franckesche Stiftungen.

Pietism (from the word piety) was a movement primarily within Lutheranism.  It was influential throughout Protestantism and Anabaptism, inspiring not only Anglican priest John Wesley to begin the Methodist movement, but also Alexander Mack to begin the Brethren movement.  The Pietist movement combined the Lutheranism of the time with the Reformed emphasis on individual piety and living a vigorous Christian life.  Though pietism shares an emphasis on personal behavior with the Puritan movement, and the two are often confused, there are important differences, particularly in the concept of the role of religion in government.  Puritanism believed that the Lord was Lord of all realms including government.  Lutheranism separated the Church and the State.

 The Three Wise Monkeys are a pictorial maxim.  Together they embody the proverbial principle to "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil".  The three monkeys are Mizaru, covering his eyes, who sees no evil; Kikazaru, covering his ears, who hears no evil; and Iwazaru, covering his mouth, who speaks no evil.  Sometimes there is a fourth monkey depicted with the three others; the last one, Shizaru, symbolizes the principle of "do no evil". He may be shown crossing his arms.  There are various meanings ascribed to the monkeys and the proverb including associations with being of good mind, speech and action.  In the Western world the phrase is often convoluted to refer to those who deal with impropriety by looking the other way, refusing to acknowledge it, or feigning ignorance.  The source that popularized this pictorial maxim is a 17th century carving over a door of the famous Tōshō-gū shrine in Nikkō, Japan.  The carvings incorporated Confucius’s Code of Conduct, using the monkey as a way to depict man’s life cycle.  There are a total of 8 panels, and the iconic three wise monkeys picture comes from panel 2.  In Chinese, a similar phrase exists in the Analects of Confucius from 2nd to 4th century B.C.: "Look not at what is contrary to propriety; listen not to what is contrary to propriety; speak not what is contrary to propriety; make no movement which is contrary to propriety".

 Amsterdam, Netherlands, Passover Haggada, 1695.

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